Profile Magazine Q3/17

The Empowerment Network

CBS’s Laurie Robinson Haden is helping women of color in corporate law connect and collaborate 48

Raising

the Bar

Throughout our annual legal issue, experts from across the industry share their secrets to making the legal office an essential business partner.

The Amazing Sellout Streak

Discover how George Prokos helped Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks sell out every home game since December 15, 2001

10

How Storage Facilities Change Lives

Roger Clark is building brand awareness to help Public Storage attract the best and brightest employees

88

Inside the Next Frontier of Marketing

Tressie Lieberman gives the inside scoop of marketing for some of the country’s biggest food brands

41

Both Hands on the Wheel

Cindy Hillaby is driving innovation at CAA South Central Ontario for its members on the road

68

Real Estate, Redefined

Dan Hart and Realty ONE Group are leading the charge in the future of real estate transactions 126

P.F. Chang’s 2.0

Chief human resources officer Michael Keane takes the restaurant chain’s corporate culture to the next level 148

The Future of the YWCA

CEO of the YWCA Chicago Dorri McWhorter explains how the nonprofit prepares for the future by aligning with the private sector 174

A Sense of Belonging

Going Full Circle

Leslie Rohrbacker felt dissatisfied with working at a law firm, so she left. Now, she’s returned to working for a law firm—not as an attorney, but as the head of HR. 168

Diversity and inclusion mean a lot to Angela Ciccolo, especially in her role at Special Olympics 184

Q3/17

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There are few things as simultaneously straightforward and full of complexity as school. Although it may seem simple, it can mean so many different things; both learning shapes in kindergarten and participating in a post-graduate seminar on identity can be summed up as “school.” The word alone garners such intense feelings and reminds even the most mature adults of visceral memories: the squeak of a chalkboard, a squishy peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the smell of red rubber eraser remnants, and the beaming pride of that big, red A on a paper.

Those feelings and sense memories can be so powerful that they overshadow the massive amount of work that goes into keeping that school moving. While I knew deep down that all of my teachers had to have done an amazing amount of work, it wasn’t until I took on a position at a college myself that I realized just how many different people and how many different skills were needed to produce the education experience. In that one college alone, experts in dozens of different fields were needed to teach, in addition to IT experts, a top-tier finance team, a group who could design the physical space, administration, advisors, recruiters, and countless others.

There are so many unsung heroes in education, a line of people who go in to work, day after day, who have a serious impact on students—even beyond the teachers, who themselves don’t get enough credit. And, while I’m more than happy to extol the work of these individuals to anyone that will listen, it’s even better to hear from them in their own words, to get a better insight into their roles, responsibilities, and achievements.

Our feature section in this issue does just that, focusing on executives in the education world who are making innovative strides that will impact thousands of children. That innovation could mean bringing tablet computers into the classroom to help students work at their own pace like Fairfax County Public Schools CIO Maribeth Luftglass (P. 100) does, or looking outside the normal recruiting areas to find great teachers with Spanish fluency, like Dr. John Mayo, CHRO of Baltimore County Public Schools (P. 106).

While the business world can so often focus on competition, advantage, and individual gain, the executives in this feature section—not to mention the many individuals spread throughout this issue who detail their amazing, charitable work in and out of the office—remind us of just how many people are out there making a massive, positive impact in their community.

Adam Kivel Senior Editor

Profile shares the stories of the modern executive.

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Share your story of exceptional leadership with our network of powerful business leaders.

TALENT

Danny Bollinger

George Prokos

SVP of Ticket Sales and Services

Dallas Mavericks Dallas, TX

The Place to Be

For years, the Dallas Mavericks struggled to draw crowds. Then Mark Cuban bought the team, and George Prokos turned American Airlines Center into the place to be for basketball fans.

By ZACH BALIVA

IIn 2001, the Dallas Mavericks were playing their best basketball in years. After missing the playoffs for a decade, the team traded for Juwan Howard and watched Michael Finley play in the NBA All-Star Game. Dallas finished the regular season with fifty-three wins and drew Utah as a first-round playoff opponent. After four games, the five-game series was tied, and the Mavericks were heading back to Utah.

After Dallas’s game four victory, George Prokos and his staff went into hyperdrive. “We had about thirty hours to create energy around a game five in Utah,” the team’s senior vice president of ticket sales and services recalls. Prokos, along with the team’s new owner, Mark Cuban, wanted to make a splash at game five. They assembled a ragtag

team of employees and season ticket holders dedicated to one common vision: to fill Utah’s Delta Center with as many Dallas fans as possible.

The problem was that Utah enforced a four-ticket limit. However, after hours of hold music and redials, the Dallas group had landed about 400 tickets, and Cuban announced a deal: he would give the tickets away for free to any Mavs fan willing and able to make the 1,200-mile pilgrimage. Next, the team set up a makeshift headquarters in a Utah hotel, where fans could receive free tickets if they agreed to have their face painted and wear a bright orange Mavericks shirt.

Although Prokos is sure his staff painted the faces of a few disguised Jazz fans, the

unusual strategy seemed to have worked. Dallas pulled away in the fourth quarter, and with less than ten seconds left, Calvin Booth made a put-back shot to give the Mavericks their first playoff series win of the Mark Cuban era. The hundreds of painted fans rushed the floor and later went to a local bar to celebrate with players and executives.

The anecdote illustrates what Prokos has experienced during his nearly two decades with Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks. He moved to Texas in 1981, worked in the automotive aftermarket, and met Cuban through mutual friends. At a New Year’s Eve party in 1999, Cuban announced he had signed a letter of intent to buy the Mavericks. A few weeks later, Cuban e-mailed Prokos. He wanted a trusted friend to shake up the underperforming sales department. Prokos was Cuban’s pick to be his first director of new revenue.

When Cuban announced his intent to purchase the Mavericks, plans were already underway to move the team to the future American Airlines Center. The stadium would house the city’s NBA and NHL teams, and Prokos would need to get a seat at the table if he was to successfully transfer 10,000 existing season ticket holders to the new stadium without incident. To do so, he started what has become a hallmark strategy for the Dallas Mavericks. “We built stronger relationships with our season ticket holders, and we still do that today,” Prokos explains. “They are so critical to what we are doing. Previous owner Ross Perot ran his organization as a real estate holding. For Mark Cuban, it’s all about entertainment.”

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THE MAVERICKS’ SELLOUT STREAK

The Dallas Mavericks are in the midst of one of the most impressive feats in the world of sports. The NBA team has sold out every home game since December 15, 2001.

The team’s stadium— American Airlines Center—holds roughly 20,000 fans. During that span, the Mavs have filled the arena for 596 regular season and 67 playoff games.

The important shift in tone has paid off. Prokos helped Dallas move a record number of tickets. Games started selling out, and in less than a year, his team enjoyed repeat sellouts. On December 15, 2001, Dallas started a string of consecutive home sellouts that remains unbroken.

How did they do it? Prokos goes back to Cuban’s core philosophical change. “We wanted to remove barriers to entry,” he says. “We wanted to keep processing fees low and ticket prices reasonable. We wanted to make American Airlines Center the place to be. We didn’t want the most money per ticket; we wanted to fill the arena.” Cuban gave Prokos the latitude he needed. The salesman was free to hire as many people as he wanted, and

Cuban suggested people with experience selling commodity items and not sports industry insiders—as long as they brought in more money than they cost.

Prokos hired people he knew were accustomed to being on the phone, overcoming objections, and working hard to close a sale. He commandeered a conference room, filled it with six phones and a stack of phone books, and asked his new employees to make calls. At the same time, his counterparts at the Mavs were changing perceptions in the city and beyond. “We went from selling basketball to selling memories and experience,” he says. “We transformed the fan experience in Dallas.”

Cuban signed renowned bad boy Dennis Rodman to generate excitement. Prokos started giving free tickets to fans willing to paint themselves and sit in a special section. The company expanded its sales force, devised creative ticket packages, and embraced alternative pricing. Prokos and his team created more special events for season ticket holders and included customers who purchased miniplans. As Dallas built upon its Utah playoff win, Dirk Nowitizki, Steve Nash, and Michael Finley emerged as franchise stars.

After several years of sellout crowds, Prokos turned his attention to sustaining his early success. “The key is keeping season ticket sales high,” he says. About 75 percent of capacity goes to season ticket holders, but even a 90 percent renewal rate means Prokos’s team has to sell plenty of new season tickets each year to stay at capacity. There’s no particular sales season; they sell yearround, prorated plans, and continue selling until inventory is gone. Scattered leftover tickets find homes with the help of software designed to harness data collected at various points of sale.

While sellouts are always Prokos’s number one goal, he says his real mission is to ensure Dallas fans have a complete

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“We went from selling basketball to selling memories and experience. We transformed the fan experience in Dallas.”

GEORGE PROKOS

experience whenever they attend a Mavs game. “We hope our fans leave feeling they were part of two and a half hours of fun and excitement for a great value,” he says. “And we want them to come back.” In 2014, he and his colleagues joined all American Airlines Center employees in Disney’s ELEVATE program, where they received training on intentional customer service. Additionally, Cuban increased pay for all part-time arena employees by 23 percent.

While Prokos and his team are driving results, they aren’t doing anything in secret. “We share best practices with other teams,” he says. “We don’t see others as competition, but we’re different because of our underlying philosophy.” Others focus on revenue even if it means they have 1,500 empty seats at each game. Dallas is focused on putting butts in the seats. When the seats are filled, the revenue follows. Since day one, they’ve focused on making the Mavs game the place to be—and they’ve created one of the longest-running parties in sports.

“George is the quintessential leader in pro sports. He’s constantly looking for new ways to grow business, enhance the fan experience, and deepen season ticket holders’ loyalty to the Mavericks.

Whether it’s relationship-building or introducing new sales and technology strategies, his vision and passion keep the Mavs innovating and executing on a daily basis.”

—Kurt Schwartzkopf, Ticketmaster SVP of NBA & NHL Arenas, North America

Challenge Accepted

After overcoming prejudices in the once maledominated field, Teresan Gilbert challenges the lawyers she mentors to push themselves

BY ALEX STEWART

Teresan Gilbert is constantly on the move. In fact, it’s difficult for her to find the time for a casual conversation during her busy work day. It’s hard for her because stopping for a chat would mean she isn’t producing, influencing, or changing something. It’s a problem, she says. Yet, in practice, it’s proven to be anything but.

That’s how she raised her two daughters by herself. It’s also how she’s able to mentor so many of her young colleagues and how she developed a curriculum for a college course on intellectual property and the law. Finally, it’s what made her the chief intellectual property counsel for Lubrizol.

The Lubrizol Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway company, develops and manufactures chemicals for the automotive, industrial, and consumer markets. With its headquarters in the Cleveland suburb of Wickliffe, Ohio, and offices worldwide, Lubrizol employs roughly 9,000 people.

As chief IP counsel, Gilbert counsels on and researches IP legal matters, evaluates freedom-to-use matters, drafts and negotiates IP agreements, and pursues licenses and acquisitions. The global nature of her work and the company’s numerous divisions and specialties keep Gilbert and her team of twelve on the move.

Lubrizol is made of three segments: additives, advanced materials, and oil-field solutions. The first supplies chemicals, additives, and technology for engine oils and industrial lubricants. The second specializes in ingredients like polymers for consumer and industrial products, which range from antiwrinkle cream to phone screens. The third aids in exploring, producing, and transporting oil. This pioneering research and constant innovation means Gilbert’s IP practice must evolve with the company.

With seven lawyers and five paralegals under her guidance, Gilbert says she spends just as much time managing as she does practicing law, which keeps the job interesting. At this stage in her career, she’s more than ready to assume the role her mentors filled for her.

TERESAN GILBERT

CHIEF IP COUNSEL

THE LUBRIZOL CORPORATION

WICKLIFFE, OH

Gilbert returns to the lessons she’s learned as a seasoned lawyer who also came of age when women were a slim minority in the workplace. She instills confidence in her mentees and challenges them to find answers for themselves. She hopes that the lessons from her own career will encourage young lawyers, especially women, to keep pushing forward.

She remembers a time when very few women practiced IP law. It’s why she applied to law school in the first place. “It was 1976,” she says. “Everyone told me, ‘Go be a nurse, go be a teacher, a physical therapist, a journalist.’ My mother wanted me to be a hairdresser. I wanted to do something women weren’t supposed to do.”

As a law clerk in her last year of school, Gilbert asked the firm about coming on as a lawyer. “One of the guys said to me, ‘How can I travel to Kansas City [for work] and tell my wife I’m traveling with you?’” she says. She didn’t get the job.

Gilbert was later hired at Sohio/BP America Inc. as an IP counsel. In the beginning, she was—at best—one of two women in the room at any given time. Her male coworkers would joke that she was hired to check the box for corporate diversity tax breaks. However, she also had great mentors there who challenged her and gave her chances—men who, more often than not, had raised daughters, she notes.

After sixteen years, she joined Lubrizol, and in 2013, she became the company’s chief IP counsel. Today, women constitute more than half of the Lubrizol legal division.

At the behest of her daughter, then a law student, Gilbert joined the Case Western Reserve University faculty as an adjunct professor in 2012. Each year, she typically teaches one IP law class, where she’s excited to bring the real world into the classroom for the next generation and advise them in their first career steps.

Although she’s constantly teaching, Gilbert never stops learning. Her goal of developing one new hobby every year has given her skills in golf, gardening, knitting, and repairing furniture. She’s also a yogi.

Gilbert’s newest challenge is drawing. In her art classes, she draws milk bottles, glasses, and cartons, and she also is trying her hand at sketching portraits of her daughters. She chose not to pursue painting because she says it doesn’t have to be as accurate as other media. And where would the challenge be in that?

AT HAHN LOESER, WE PRACTICE THE ART OF CREATIVE, SOPHISTICATED LEGAL COUNSEL, PROVIDING THE FULL SPECTRUM OF LEGAL SERVICES AS ONE DISCIPLINED FIRM. WE PARTNER WITH CLIENTS LIKE THE LUBRIZOL CORPORATION WHEN DEVELOPING STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS THAT ANSWER BUSINESS OBJECTIVES AND ACHIEVE RESULTS.

A LIFELONG LEGAL YOGI

Teresan Gilbert first picked up yoga in 1973, when she and some friends would roll their mats out in their college’s student union.

Today, the selfproclaimed type A personality uses the practice to clear her mind and be present in the moment.

“When my daughters were in high school, whenever they lost their lunch or something, my mantra around the house was, ‘Okay, let’s breathe, guys, let’s breathe!’” she says.

She also considers it a tool she can use off the mat and in the workplace. When her mind is quiet, Gilbert can focus better. That way, her decisions come from a place of compassion and knowledge, not emotion.

Gilbert is currently enrolled in a 200-hour yoga teacher training class—not because she wants to teach, but because she wants to improve her practice.

“Sometimes I laugh and say that when they put me in a nursing home, I’ll be their yoga teacher,” she says.

Hahn Loeser

Teresan Gilbert

Chief Intellectual Property Counsel

The Lubrizol Corporation

Why CFO Ken Kane Loves His Company

Ken Kane and Guaranteed Rate champion their hometown

By JONAS WEIR

The days of someone walking in with a shoe box of tax returns, pay stubs, and traditional documents to get a mortgage are gone. Even a decade ago, long before he joined Guaranteed Rate as its chief financial officer, Ken Kane foresaw a digital future.

“Whoever was going to develop an electronic solution to the mortgage process was going to be the front-runner,” Kane says.

So when the opportunity came to join Guaranteed Rate, Kane jumped on it. Founded in 2000 by Victor Ciardelli, Guaranteed Rate is known for bringing the industry its first all-digital mortgage. That means new home buyers can get a quote and find the right mortgage without ever setting foot in a traditional office. It’s an inventive approach that’s grown the company from a small operation to a top-ten national lender with more than 3,000 employees and $23 billion in home loans closed in 2016 alone. And this reputation as an innovative market disrupter was a huge draw for Kane.

On the other hand, something else about the company piqued Kane’s interest: its Chicago ties. Kane is a Chicago Southsider,

through and through. He was raised in the Ashburn community area in the city’s southwest corner, and growing up with five siblings in what he calls a traditional, blue-collar, Catholic household had a profound effect on his personal and professional lives.

“Being one of six, everything was definitely a competitive atmosphere,” he says. “My dad was a vice principal of a Chicago public high school, and he was also in the army at one point, so discipline was very much a part of my upbringing. A lot of the value structure that I have and the way I conduct my business life and my personal life stems from that.”

When it came time for Kane to go to college, he chose to pursue a business degree from DePaul University on the city’s North Side. It was his father’s alma mater and none of his siblings had gone there, so he felt it was his duty to enroll. It also didn’t hurt that DePaul is one of Chicago’s premier business schools. On his first day of class, he met his future wife, also

After twenty-five years in accounting, Ken

Ken Kane

Kane has found his home at Guaranteed Rate.

a South Side native, and they started dating a month later.

Four years after that, in May 1990, he graduated and passed the CPA exam in the same month, which made him a highly recruited job candidate. With all of the large firms having a presence in Chicago, Kane had his pick of where to work, but instead of going with one of the big eight, he chose a firm where he could be exposed to many different areas of finance.

“I ended up going with a medium-sized, regional firm, which gave me the luxury of working in the tax area as well as the audit practice,” Kane says, adding that he would handle the company’s corporate taxes and the client’s personal income taxes after the audit. “In the summer, there were projects in different industries. For example, a common area of billing of the accounting firm was to get involved in nonprofits and governmental entities.”

After seven years of learning all sides of accounting, Kane moved to the mortgage industry. And following eighteen years at three national independent mortgage lenders, Kane found a company that was the right fit, Guaranteed Rate. After all, the company was an innovative top-ten lender that was proud of its hometown. In fact, about a year into his tenure at Guaranteed Rate, the company announced it would be buying the naming rights to the Chicago White Sox stadium— now officially named Guaranteed Rate Field.

“From a business standpoint, we had a unique branding and advertising opportunity; very seldom does one of the four major sports present a stadium naming rights opportunity,” Kane, a lifelong Sox fan, says. “From a local perspective, teaming up with an iconic team like the Chicago White Sox was a dream come true. Both organizations have a hardworking mentality and value system and an extreme Chicago tie.”

Bold moves like that make Guaranteed Rate such a great place to work, and being a great place to work makes Kane’s job easier.

Kane sees his role as protecting and enhancing shareholder value. He does this by managing risk, implementing compliance standards, monitoring key performance indicators, and building a robust reporting system for the executives of the company. However, to accomplish all of the goals, he surrounds himself with top industry talent, which he couldn’t do without Guaranteed Rate’s corporate culture.

“We’re a collaborative environment, and we’re constantly evaluating every process. Everyone’s ideas matter,” Kane says. “When

“When people walk into an environment where they know their opinions matter, it makes my job of attracting top talent easier.”

KEN KANE

people walk into an environment where they know their opinions matter, it makes my job of attracting top talent easier.”

To that end, Guaranteed Rate also promotes a positive work-life balance and has all the amenities employees need to achieve that. The company has an on-site gym, three full-time chefs who cook breakfast and lunch, a juice bar, a dry cleaning service that comes in twice a week, a full-time nurse on site, and a beautiful roof deck that hosts at least one employee event a month.

“The owner wants you to be active and exercise, eat healthy, get your rest, and get your eight hours of sleep,” Kane says. “He understands you have a life outside of work.”

Kane also easily attracts younger talent by creating a team atmosphere, which he says millennials tend to favor over a traditionally structured environment. Similarly, the offices are located in a vibrant neighborhood in Chicago rather than in a stark, glass skyscraper in the city’s downtown district. In fact, it’s been named as one of the top workplaces by the Chicago Tribune five times in the past six years. On top of that, Kane says Chicago is a world-class city where you’re no more than thirty minutes from anything—shopping, Broadway-caliber theater, professional sports, nightlife, five-star restaurants—and it’s exactly why he’s proud to call the city and Guaranteed Rate home.

Wells Fargo congratulates Ken Kane, chief financial officer of Guaranteed Rate for being featured in Profile magazine. It is an honor to do business with Ken and see all he has accomplished in the mortgage lending industry. We’ve worked with Ken and his team in creating an evolving cash management solution to meet Guaranteed Rate’s growing business and changing needs. It is our pleasure to work with a talented and hardworking visionary who leads through innovation.

Leaders engage us, allow us to take chances, unite our voices, and transform our ideas into actions.

Wells Fargo congratulates Ken Kane, chief financial officer of Guaranteed Rate, for his passion and commitment to excellence. We are honored to work with Ken and Guaranteed Rate and wish them continued success.

Delighting the Customer

With innovative, customized solutions (and jelly donuts), PURE is changing how customers think of their insurance company

By JEFF SILVER

Great partnerships withstand the test of time.

In 2006, Martin Hartley, Ross Buchmueller, and Jeff Paraschac left AIG Private Client Group to launch PURE Insurance. Their goal was to create a better insurance experience for high-net-worth consumers. To do that, they came up with a deceptively simple idea: focus exclusively on serving and delighting policyholders.

PURE (Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange), which is the only US insurer focused exclusively on the high-net-worth segment, is policyholder-owned and dedicated to creating an exceptional member experience. By combining this dedication with technical innovations and a highly engaging and supportive culture, PURE now serves more than 60,000 members and has grown by more than 40 percent annually the past nine out of ten years. Its members are just as dedicated to the insurer, as evidenced by a world-class Net Promoter Score of ninety-one for members who have filed a claim.

Shouldn’t your core system do the same?

Congratulations PURE on your many years of success. We are proud to be part of the journey.

®

“Members tell us that they’ve never had such a positive experience and that they’re telling their friends about us,” says Hartley, PURE’s chief operating officer. “They have massive enthusiasm for what we’re building.”

Among the innovations that have helped drive this momentum is the PURE Situation Room, a microsite and alert service that provides members with warnings when dangerous weather is on the way. The site also provides seasonal tips for protecting homes and other assets and notifications about product recalls. Additionally, the company offers PURE CyberSafe Solutions to help protect members from online privacy risks.

As a policyholder-owned reciprocal insurance company, PURE is committed to returning underwriting profits back to members. Rather than trying to maximize the difference between premiums collected and claims paid, the company has allocated $19.5 million to subscriber savings accounts (SSAs) since its inception.

“We’re transparent with all our financials, which demonstrates how we’re dedicated to fair pricing and doing what’s best for members,” Hartley says.

Because PURE members often have unique and complicated insurance needs—such as the family that opens their personal sports facility to local youth teams for training or the nonprofit board member who needs specialized liability coverage—the company takes a proactive and customized approach to risk management. In California, for example, it assesses properties for safety features

Martin Hartley EVP, COO PURE Insurance

White Plains, NY

like automatic seismic shutoff valves that close gas lines in the event of an earthquake. If weaknesses or shortcomings are revealed, the team immediately contacts vendors that can make needed repairs or install equipment at the member’s request.

The company also uses third-party data. For example, PURE uses soil moisture content in dry environments to analyze fire risk and aerial photography to examine rooftops in hail-prone areas. “We move seamlessly from offering innovative and creative advice to fully executing our solutions,” Hartley says.

To simplify billing monthly premiums, PURE developed a credit card-style system that sends a single comprehensive monthly statement summarizing all policies, premiums, and transactions that can cover properties, vehicles, and artwork in multiple locations. This replaces individual statements that used to be sent for each policy.

A great deal of effort goes into facilitating and reinforcing PURE’s dedication to members. At the claims level, this begins with licensed adjusters taking the first notice of loss, rather than outsourcing this to a call center like most other insurers.

“If you’re in the middle of a crisis, you don’t want to wait days to speak with someone who can help you,” Hartley says. “We get everything confirmed and start the process immediately. It’s a completely different conversation than speaking with someone who simply takes notes and has someone else call you back.”

The company’s roughly twenty thousand claims have also benefited from ongoing employee training in the PURE EQ Program, which focuses on emotional intelligence. It has helped to create a staff that is highly sensitive and empathetic to each other and to members. For example, a member who lost a vacation home to fire was very concerned about their grandchildren who were coming to visit two weeks later and wouldn’t have life vests to go out on the water. Although there were other more immediate details to address, the claims agent sensed how important the life vests were and made arrangements to have proper-sized vests sent to the temporary rental property.

“It’s relatively simple to teach the technical aspects of taking care of a claim,” Hartley says. “We go further and recruit and train people with an affinity for understanding what’s necessary on an emotional level in situations where they usually end up doing more listening than talking.”

TRAINING FOR THE FUTURE

The insurance industry faces a looming talent gap as roughly 25 percent of its most experienced professionals are expected to retire within five years. PURE is addressing that issue with its annual summer training program. The twelve-week session provides classroom instruction, collaborative group exercises, and mentoring to new hires before they receive additional on-the-job training for full-time positions in underwriting, claims and risk management, corporate strategy, and other critical business functions. Millennials currently represent about 50 percent of PURE’s staff and remain with the company 92 percent of the time. They are the professionals who are dedicated to serving PURE policyholders well into the future.

NEBCO Insurance Services joins in congratulating MARTIN HARTLEY for his leadership and success at PURE Insurance. Our boutique independent insurance agency values our partnership with PURE, delivering customized personal risk management solutions that protect the assets and lifestyle of our mutual clients.

EVERY PROPERTY IS MARKED WITH A NUMBER.

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This kind of attentiveness is responsible for PURE agents making sure that games and toys are provided to help members’ children feel more at home in temporary housing. In one circumstance, PURE’s exemplary service actually took the form of a punch line. When asked if there was anything more that could be done to help take care of their claim, a member joked,“You could send jelly donuts.” The company had a box of donuts hand-delivered the next day.

It’s all part of an evolving business strategy that adapts to numerous changing factors, like a national increase in the number of drivers and auto losses or climate change that will alter flood patterns and the occurrence of extreme weather events.

Hartley, however, knows there are certain elements that will remain constant. “We view ourselves as being eleven years into building a one-hundred-year company,” he says. “We’ll always be looking for service innovation and product improvements to delight members and reinforcing a culture that empowers our people to do great things.”

BELFOR Property Restoration is the premier worldwide disaster restoration company serving thirty-one countries with over three hundred offices. BELFOR services residential, commercial, and industrial customers to help them return to normal operations after disaster. From water and flood restoration, fire and smoke recovery, and structural damage repair and cleanup to the recovery and restoration of equipment and vital documents, BELFOR has a rapid and proven response in “Restoring More Than Property.” For more information, visit belfor.com.

SERVPRO is a leader and provider of fire and water cleanup and restoration services and mold mitigation and remediation. With over 1,700 franchises in the United States and Canada, SERVPRO has established relationships with major insurance companies, commercial clients, and individual homeowners.

NEBCO Insurance Services joins in congratulating Martin Hartley for his leadership and success at PURE Insurance. Our boutique independent insurance agency values our partnership with PURE, delivering customized personal risk management solutions that protect the assets and lifestyle of our mutual clients.

OneShield Software delivers core business solutions to the P&C, Life, and Health markets, deployed in the cloud or on premise. Our portfolio of standalone, subscription, and cloud-based products include enterprise-class policy management, billing, claims, rating, product configuration, business intelligence, and analytics solutions. OneShield automates and simplifies the complexities of core systems lowering your total cost of ownership. To learn more, visit OneShield.com.

DEFENDING MEMBERS’ DATA

Cyberattacks are a modern reality. In fact, in 2014, 47 percent of adults in the United States had personal information exposed by hackers and 432 million accounts were hacked. So, to help protect its members from digital threats, PURE Insurance created PURE CyberSafe Solutions. At the center of CyberSafe Solutions is PURE’s Cyber Knowledge Center, where members can find resources geared at educating on and helping to mitigate cyber-risks. Included in this online resource is a comprehensive white paper and CyberSmart, which was developed by PURE in partnership with Rubica Inc., leaders in cyber-risk management, to address the specific threats facing those with high net worth.

PURE also offers a Cyber Advice Hotline through which PURE’s cyberspecialists assist members with specific cyber-related questions or concerns and a ten-point cyber-risk assessment designed to help members identify and mitigate major vulnerabilities in their home network, devices, and online activities.

PURE also offers customizable solutions for members wanted even more monitoring and protection.

Know the Law by Heart

Mark Sproat’s desire to grow by asking questions and seeking advisers led him to educational product company Follett, where the legal leader continues his mentoring network

BY DAVID LEVINE

Mark Sproat rose from humble beginnings to the upper echelons of corporate law in large part because he listened to and learned from mentors. He discovered his path to success through their example. “Over the years, I have always felt like I was the beneficiary of many great mentors,” says Sproat, executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary at Follett Corporation. “Always express a desire to listen and learn.”

That philosophy originated in his childhood, growing up in a small farming community in central Illinois, where his high school graduating class totaled forty-seven kids. Then he attended Eastern Illinois University, a decision he made mainly because the prospect of going to the much larger University of Illinois scared him to death. Yet, Sproat did move to Chicago after graduation and began working various jobs while he earned an MBA at night. Next, he moved on to earn a law degree. He attributes his continued learning to his parents, whom he says emphasized education.

Plus, Forrest Claypool, an influential figure in Chicago and Illinois politics, also came from Sproat’s hometown. “He challenged me to think independently,” Sproat says. “He was, and is, a big role model.” It was Claypool and Sproat’s wife who encouraged him to pursue his law degree at Loyola University Chicago. “I never would have succeeded without her support,” he adds.

After earning his JD, Sproat began his career at the Chicago office of international law firm Jones Day. “Working at Jones Day was like doing a residency,” he says. “Here I was learning a skill.”

After five years at the firm, he realized that he wanted to become an in-house lawyer. To better combine his business and legal skills, he joined human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates. There, he became manager of its outsourcing group, with about forty attorneys reporting to him.

That’s also where he developed more mentors. “At Hewitt, they had many people willing to mentor, if you asked,” Sproat says. “I found out that asking questions was going to give you much

MARK SPROAT

EVP, GENERAL COUNSEL, SECRETARY FOLLETT CORPORATION

WESTCHESTER, IL

more than an answer to something; it would open the door for more questions. If you demonstrate a desire to listen, you would be shocked at how much you can learn.”

When Aon bought Hewitt and became Aon Hewitt, Sproat was named chief counsel for the new corporation. “But I knew I would never be general counsel there,” he says. “I am a transactional guy, and they needed a litigator.” Another mentor stepped in—his former boss at Hewitt—and arranged a meeting with the CEO of Follett Corporation.

“He didn’t have to do that, but he did,” Sproat says. “I also talked to Forrest Claypool, who I hadn’t seen in years, and he agreed to meet for lunch. He didn’t have to do that either. So many people have been more than happy to help me. I like to think I have helped a number of people and made a number of calls and connections on their behalf to keep that network going.”

Along with the help of his mentors, hard work got Sproat to where he is today. “I’ve been criticized for being a workaholic, and I don’t make it home for dinner very often,” he says. “I’m lucky that my wife understands that. I never would have succeeded without her support.”

He soon joined Follett Corporation, headquartered in Westchester, Illinois, which for 140 years has been higher education’s leading academic retailer and largest wholesaler.

Operating in more than 1,250 campus stores, it boasts an assortment of products and services to drive access, affordability, and student success. As executive vice president, general counsel, secretary, and executive committee member, Sproat is responsible for the legal team and all legal functions, asset protection (loss prevention), and the team and facilities support group.

One of his core beliefs is that attorneys should be embedded in the business functions they serve. “I appointed lead counsel for each of our units, and I want them to understand the business and develop relationships with the unit leaders,” Sproat says. “I want those leaders to look to them as their attorney. I was taught that at Hewitt. I had a mentor there who said, and I will never forget this, that as an in-house attorney, your client is the company. You need to understand their needs and requirements and how you can serve them. If they feel you are in the same boat rowing with them, you can accomplish a lot.”

Today, Sproat’s biggest challenge is mentoring his attorneys on how to prioritize. “It’s helping them to understand where they need to concede a point and where to dig in,” he says. “It’s getting them to understand what is truly important. You can argue everything, or you can roll over on everything. There is a balance there. I tell my attorneys, ‘If you are aligned with your business leader, the two of you should be able to come to a resolution.’”

JONES DAY IS HONORED THAT CLIENTS LIKE FOLLETT CORPORATION TRUST US WITH THEIR MOST CHALLENGING LEGAL ISSUES. JONES DAY, A LEGAL INSTITUTION WITH MORE THAN 2,500 LAWYERS ON FIVE CONTINENTS, REMAINS COMMITTED TO A RELENTLESS FOCUS ON CLIENT SERVICE TRANSCENDING THE INTERESTS OF INDIVIDUAL LAWYERS. WE ARE ONE FIRM WORLDWIDE.

Applause, Applause.

Distinction is always confined to the few. Jones Day congratulates Mark Sproat for his outstanding accomplishments, his distinguished service, and the leadership he has provided to Follett Corporation as its Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary.

2500 Lawyers. 44 Locations. 5 Continents. www.jonesday.com

Hitting the Career Jackpot

Pure Canadian Gaming’s Suzanne Lalonde overcomes obstacles and celebrates victories on her way up the gaming industry ladder

By DAVID BAEZ

When Suzanne Lalonde answered a help wanted ad for a casino cocktail waitress, she couldn’t have guessed that a decision she made as a college freshman would eventually lead to her managing two casinos that generate about $45 million in revenue annually. But it would also prove to be the first step on her unlikely career path.

“I actually had no idea what a casino was,” she says. “I only responded to the ad because of the location, which was close to school.”

During the interview, Lalonde learned that the waitress position had been filled but that a croupier class was starting the following week. During the six-week course, Lalonde learned to deal American roulette. She became fascinated with the technical aspect of croupier work—dealing with finesse and accuracy and adding up winning bets in mere seconds. She also got to know the staff and listened eagerly to their tales of world travel in the industry. “I quickly decided I wanted the same thing,” Lalonde says.

Within a year, she had honed her chip-handling skills so much that the casino promoted her to inspector, where

she ensured game integrity, guest service, dealer development, and accurate payouts. The increased responsibility was substantial, but she missed the energy at the tables. Every day on her way to the break room, she would peer over at the craps tables. Even looking at a table was considered a transgression at the time; male players believed women could bring back luck if they looked at the dice.

It was all so intriguing: the superstitions, the taboo, the air of seriousness, and the back and forth between the players, the dealers, and the boxman who controlled the game and the cash. When her general manager asked her what she might want to do next in the casino, she immediately told her craps. The manager chuckled at first, but she saw that Lalonde was serious. After a few weeks of gentle but insistent prodding by Lalonde, she gave in.

She trained four hours a day for eight weeks and passed— one of only four out of the twelve students to do so. The chauvinism of the players didn’t die

Suzanne Lalonde VP, Regional General Manager Pure Canadian Gaming Calgary,

Suzanne Lalonde went from being a croupier to managing two casinos in Alberta, Canada.

Stanley Nelitz

easily; they staged a walkout in protest of the female dealers. They came back a week later, but they continued to test Lalonde and the other two female dealers with pranks and even intimidation. But Lalonde didn’t back away from the experience.

“Over time, with mental toughness, resilience, and the support of the boxmen, we were finally accepted,” she says.

As a professional dealer who had demonstrated toughness, the world opened up to Lalonde. She took a job as a craps dealer on a cruise ship based out of Miami and moved up the ranks to boxman, pit boss, and eventually shift manager. After two years, she joined Casinos Austria, for which she relocated to Poland. She then transfered to Canberra to open its first Australian casino. She spent a year there before accepting her next contract in Prague, which she remembers as the most beautiful city in the world. Next, a friend enlisted Lalonde’s help in leading a new casino company in Turkey. For a time, it seemed as if Lalonde would live in every corner of the earth. But then she had a child, and staying in one place became essential.

She worked with Sheraton in Nova Scotia for thirteen years, where she trained in leadership and business management. In 2010, she was recruited for a position in Alberta, and two years later, she met George Goldhoff, CEO of Pure Canadian Gaming, who offered her a job managing Casino Calgary. Heading into her second year with Pure, Lalonde was achieving strong results at Casino Calgary, so she was given the additional responsibility of Casino Lethbridge and promoted to vice president and regional general manager.

Alberta has a unique gaming model. The casinos are regulated provincially, and the province takes the lion’s share of the revenue. In slots, it’s an 85:15 split. Table games work on the charity model, with half of the revenue going to an organization. Because of that, there hasn’t been much opportunity for casino owners to reinvest in the facilities. Pure came into the market in 2011 with capital, bought four casinos from private owners, and invested in upgrades, employee training, and player development plans.

“Some things in Alberta have changed with the introduction of our company,” Lalonde says. “There’s still lots of room for improvement, but it’s become more competitive and progressive.”

Rising through the ranks and making a career of it is by no means the rule in the world of casinos, which tend to employ students and other workers in transition. Still,

“I actually had no idea what a casino was. I only responded to the ad because of the location, which was close to school.”

SUZANNE LALONDE

Lalonde says that the turnover rate is less than 20 percent at her casinos. She attributes this to Alberta’s demographics and Pure Canadian Gaming’s culture, where the mission is to “make good things happen for other people.”

In her current role, Lalonde says that the dealing skills that wowed her in her first years in the business are not what she focuses on in hiring. She looks closer at the spirit of the candidate to see if it would be a good match. Maybe candidates with a glint in their eye remind her of herself when she first started.

“At one point in the industry, people were focused on technical skill, but we don’t focus on that at all,” she says. “We hire for attitude and train for skill. We’re always looking for people who have a positive outlook, good energy, a can-do attitude, and love to be around other people. You can teach them all the technical skills they need afterward.”

Looking back on all the adventures the casino industry has allowed her to have, Lalonde has a difficult time finding one experience that outshines the others. Prague was eerily beautiful with the fog-shrouded Charles Bridge, and Turkey’s vibrant markets were wonderful as well.

“I love the life on the islands, but I also love the bigger cities,” she says. “There is no place as spectacular as Europe and no place like home but Canada. I guess if I had to do it all again, I would.”

Ultra Shine has built a corporate culture that enriches the lives of our customers and our employees. We strive to build unparalleled partnerships with our world-class customers by over delivering on expectation while providing the flexibility and adaptability you’d expect from a full service, self-managed building maintenance supplier.

Using Niche Practice Groups for Growth

Bruce Denson overcame his inexperience in the insurance industry to help expand Cobbs Allen’s presence on the national stage

By JOE DYTON

Bruce Denson would be the first to admit that working in the insurance business wasn’t his first choice, but there’s a very good chance that it will be his final business stop. Denson is the president and chief operating officer of Cobbs Allen, a Birmingham, Alabama-based risk management and insurance firm. The company offers a unique approach, called “the guideline process,” to local, regional, and national businesses in commercial and personal insurance, employee benefits, and alternative risk financing.

Although Denson has a high-profile title and a father who’s a staple in the insurance industry, a career in insurance was anything but a foregone conclusion for him. In fact, he had no plans to work in insurance, let alone to live in Birmingham. He studied philosophy and classics at Vanderbilt and had his eyes set on becoming a pastor after he graduated.

“I started seminary in a masters in divinity program with the purpose of becoming a college minister,” he says. “I’m still very

interested in those things. I still read every day and am close with many friends in academia and ministry, but it wasn’t the right fit for me.”

After two years, he was unsure of where he should go or what he should do careerwise, so he called his father, who always thought he’d be great in the insurance business, and asked if his offer to join Cobbs Allen still stood. His father responded by asking when he could start.

“I started in January 2005, with no experience, no knowledge of the insurance business, and no real business knowledge,” Denson says. “I didn’t know much about economics. It was a really big learning curve and something that, initially, I simply enjoyed learning about. It was a whole other world of problems and thinking that was different and new.”

Given his lack of knowledge of the industry and business in general, it’s no surprise that success didn’t come right away. When Denson started,

Bruce Denson President, COO Cobbs Allen Birmingham, AL

Before joining Cobbs Allen, Bruce Denson was studying at a seminary in a masters program.

Cobbs Allen was mostly a Birmingham-area agency, and anyone he could try to bring on board was already a client or very familiar with the firm. His plan to expand the business’s reach outside of Alabama was solely to pick up the phone and call people, which left him with only a small level of success after two years. He knew that if he was going to excel, something had to change.

“I had this realization that what I was doing wasn’t really working,” Denson says. “I enjoyed the work, but we were never going to write enough business out of state that way to grow. I had to find a new way to write business somewhere other than Birmingham. I needed a way to give that initial phone call more meaning; that was the reality.”

Denson’s plan to get business outside of Alabama was to focus on risk management for specific industries throughout the country rather than focusing on selling insurance. These narrowly focused niche practice groups would be the differentiator Cobbs Allen needed to grow.

His first two attempts didn’t go well. He first worked with pizza delivery companies but only had one client hire Cobbs Allen to write one line of insurance, and it wasn’t for a lot of money. His second idea was to try the same plan in the home-building industry. Denson found a little more success there. A local home builder hired him and then introduced Denson to one of the leading home builder consultants in Denver, who ultimately endorsed his program.

The idea was good, but the timing wasn’t. Denson started to gain momentum in the home-building industry in 2006 and 2007, which happened to fall upon the eve of the housing industry falling apart.

“We were actually marginally successful with builders,” Denson says. “We had one of the largest builders in the Southeast hire us. It was moving in the right direction, and then the economy fell apart and that business went away.”

After the first two misses, it wouldn’t have surprised anyone, including Denson, if Cobbs Allen had decided to move on from his practice group initiative. Fortunately, the third time proved to be the charm; he discovered the need for risk management in the vocational school industry.

“They have their own basket of risk issues that a traditional four-year state university or private college doesn’t have,” Denson says. “Since, at the time and even now, most policies and procedures were tailored to traditional four-year institutions, there was a

real gap in the market for vocational schools. It’s a different kind of risk.”

The vocational school practice group continues to be a boost for Cobbs Allen. The company has its own customized policy forms tailored to the vocational school space and a partnership with one of the largest education trade associations in the country. What looked like too risky of a venture has now produced the company’s largest book of business.

“That is one of the great things about our firm: we encourage risk taking and don’t punish failure,” Denson says. “After the first two had bombed, a lot of people would have been like, ‘Hey, why don’t you just focus on our core business in Birmingham?’ But that wasn’t our culture, and Cobbs didn’t do that with me. Consequently, we don’t do that with other people now.”

The risk-taking spirit has spilled over throughout Cobbs Allen, as it has branched out into other practice groups and opened three offices since Denson became president. Practice groups have become the foundation of that expansion to Kansas City (PEOs), Houston (Energy), and New Orleans (Marine).

It has also pushed Cobbs into entirely new concepts that bridge the divide between traditional insurance and the financial and healthcare markets. Two years ago, Cobbs Allen started Out Front Financial to bring traditional financial risk products onto an insurance platform, and this year, the company started Out Front Health, a subsidiary that provides innovative health insurance solutions to professional employer organizations.

“The ideas we are executing in those business units are pretty cutting edge,” Denson says. “We have several ideas in the pipeline, and our practice leaders of those two divisions are two of the most creative people in insurance. Bringing that kind of new thinking will help us grow in new directions that have the potential to be exponential.”

For a guy who wanted nothing to do with insurance, Denson not only found his footing, but he also helped grow his company’s presence on a national level. Now, he admits that calling his dad was one of the best career moves he’s ever made.

“I said when I started I was going to be here for five years, go to business school, and do something else, but I ended up just loving the business,” Denson says. “It’s a great business. My dad and the other executives at Cobbs Allen have been great mentors. We hope we can continue to expand and are looking for more cities and growth opportunities for 2018.”

“Being out front for our clients means more than selling insurance. It means managing the risks hidden in a balance sheet and a medical chart”

—Bruce Denson Jr. Always Outfront President

cobbsallen.com Cobbs Allen is proud to introduce two new innovative offerings to our clients, Outfront Health and Outfront Financial.

Global Currencies, Utility Efficiencies

Robert Farrow’s job overseeing Itron’s treasury determines how technologies are sold and paid for all across the world

By RUSS KLETTKE

WWhen the Republic of Ireland installed water meters on many of the country’s homes between 2014 and 2016, it was a bit of a shock to residents. Instead of having water fees embedded in their taxes, as was done previously, the Irish now pay according to how much each resident draws from their faucets.

Count this as a positive green initiative. As is common just about everywhere else in Europe, an awareness of use and costs tends to foster frugality—and the fixing of leaky pipes.

The water meters used on the Emerald Isle are Itron’s Aquadis+. Based in Liberty Lake, Washington, where Robert Farrow serves as vice president of treasury and strategic planning, Itron is a global provider of technologies and services that zero in on smart use of energy and water resources.

What the company was able to do for Ireland is just one example of how Itron products work and how Farrow’s role in making it happen occurs on a global scale. From New York to New Delhi, there are many leaky pipes, and Itron is there. The metering and monitoring of water and energy usage is key to how everyone, everywhere, can help cut waste, costs, and the environmental burden of resource use.

Robert Farrow VP of Treasury, Strategic Planning Itron

Liberty Lake, WA

MARSH AND MERCER CONGRATULATE

Rob Farrow, Vice President — Strategic Planning and Treasury at Itron, on being featured in this month’s Profile magazine. We are honored to partner with Itron.

“My peers will tell you that cash forecasting may sound easy, but it’s difficult to do well. It’s never an exact science, and needs thoughtful estimation.”

ROBERT FARROW

Marsh and Mercer are part of Marsh & McLennan Companies, a global professional services firm offering clients advice and solutions in risk, strategy and people. www.mmc.com

www.marsh.com | www.mercer.com

Itron’s technologies are also being applied to the Internet of Things (IoT). Everything from solar energy management to gas pipeline safety, streetlight management, and home energy and water usage can operate more rationally when monitored in real time using the wireless technologies found in many of the company’s products. Utility and building technicians are the new warriors against waste, with smart devices, tablets, and desktop computers as their weapons.

However, transacting Itron’s technology across borders is not as easy as transmitting high-frequency signals. Everything from foreign currency exchange rates to commodity price volatility—not to mention municipal, national, and regional politics—can affect this business.

“My main worries are about cash: generating it, using it, and protecting it in all the different places we do business,” Farrow explains. “We have to write contracts that set prices in different countries according to all these factors of exchange rates and risk. We have extremely complex business transactions for our size, which is about $2 billion per year.”

All of this is why Farrow’s role is important in the planning function at Itron. With a degree in physical geography from Aberystwyth University in Wales and experience at other companies in CFO, corporate treasurer, and vice president of financial services roles, Farrow is now an advisor to Itron’s senior management, as well as the company’s board of directors.

“On strategy, the C-suite drives the vision. The operating teams know the products, and my role is about the financial side of it,” he

says. “I am responsible for Itron’s liquidity and capital allocation, setting priorities on where and how to fund the business. When looking into a deal, for example, we have to consider whether it’s financially smarter to develop our own solution or to acquire.”

Another factor the company must deal with, as with any firm in the energy industry, is price volatility. “My peers will tell you that cash forecasting may sound easy, but it’s difficult to do well,” Farrow says. “It’s never an exact science and needs thoughtful estimation, especially for the longer term. We have to sometimes be comfortable with 70 percent accuracy in our forecasts. Some people who are used to clear-cut accounting find this difficult.”

So how does Farrow guide his staff— which includes fourteen people, many of whom are CPAs and MBAs—to deal with this inexactitude? “It’s the art of understanding the business flows, using everyone’s experience to call out poor forecasting inputs,” he explains. “The team has to have the confidence to make judgment calls.” Part of this means connecting his team with the field and getting them into the business of technologies and the customer applications. “Gaining that experience is what makes this so interesting to me,” he adds.

Judging by the vast global trend toward urbanization, it’s understandable that he feels this way. The United Nations projected in 2014 that 54 percent of the world’s population lives in cities, a number that will increase to 66 percent by 2050 during a time of overall population growth. This means that the world’s cities will add about 2.5 billion people over the next three decades. About 90 percent of that

growth will occur in Asia and Africa, according to World Urbanization Prospects.

That is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built, repaired, or modernized. And when it comes to the topic of infrastructure, it’s only inevitable to talk about the IoT. Therefore, in 2014 the company launched its OpenWay Riva solution, a first-in-class distributed intelligence solution that supports sensing technologies and dynamic applications at the device level. It essentially links smart meters, Cisco routers, and the Linux operating system for multicommunications and distributed intelligence for IoT applications. The solution is open to programmers and app developers to deliver computing power, control, and analytics for automated decision making.

Importantly, OpenWay Riva is particularly useful in dense urban environments with concrete high-rises or places where other technologies, such as wireless mesh networks, perform poorly. Hong Kong’s electric utility, China Light and Power, was one of the first pilots. It’s still in the rollout phase but holds much promise. “Getting OpenWay Riva right and used will enable company growth,” Farrow says.

He also emphasizes how governmentscale clients use some of the company’s technologies, while others are consumerdriven products. In every case, the goal is to deliver earnings to shareholders. When Farrow joined the company in 2015, it was just a few years out from a turnaround scenario with a strong portfolio of products. “Itron has a reputation for smart metering and is moving into a higher level of product sophistication,” he says. “It is enabling people to control their water, gas, and electric consumption.” Most interestingly, he says, “We can help fix stuff.”

While still in its early phase, Irish Water reports that the leaks were greater than previously thought. But at least they know now. And the first wave of repairs already saves about thirty-four million liters of water per day.

Celebrating a Customer That Makes a Difference

Wells Fargo Middle Market Banking salutes Robert Farrow, Itron’s vice president of treasury and strategic planning, for his vision and leadership in helping Itron accomplish its mission of creating a more resourceful world.

Through technology and innovation, Itron helps utilities better manage energy and water resources with less waste.

Wells Fargo is proud to have played a role in Itron’s global growth and success throughout the years by providing credit and treasury management services. We applaud Itron’s corporate mission.

Great leaders inspire us

Leaders engage us, allow us to take chances, unite our voices, and focus our ideas into action.

Wells Fargo Middle Market Banking salutes Robert Farrow, Itron’s vice president of treasury and strategic planning, for his ongoing leadership in streamlining treasury operations and facilitating global restructuring.

Through technology and innovation, Itron is helping utilities around the world change the way that they manage energy and water resources to eliminate waste.

Wells Fargo is proud to have played a role in Itron’s global growth and success by providing credit and treasury management services, and your Wells Fargo relationship team applauds your efforts to create a more resourceful world.

Building a Legal Team From Scratch

When John McFarland joined Silicon Valley tech company Synaptics, he became a team of one. Since then, he’s developed a strong legal team and helped build revenue from about $600 million to $1.7 billion.

BY RANDALL COLBURN

“A lot of successful people don’t acknowledge the role of luck in their success,” John McFarland says with a laugh. “I freely and fully acknowledge the role of plain, dumb luck.”

Sure, he’s being a little modest, but there’s some truth to what he’s saying. Several of the moments that changed the course of McFarland’s life came about serendipitously. During his time in the Army, he made the knee-jerk decision to take a post in Korea, where he met his wife and spent a good portion of his career. And then there’s the story of how an unsuccessful project bid helped him secure a job at MagnaChip—the semiconductor manufacturer that shaped his skill set and gave him the tools to succeed at technology company Synaptics, based in San Jose, California.

At Synaptics, McFarland serves as the senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary, and since 2013, he has helped lead the company’s legal team as the company’s revenue increased from $664 million to $1.67 billion. Growth like that isn’t just luck, though. “We have grown so much because this company fully understands the technology trends in the industry and, in many cases, leads the technology inflection points in the industry,” McFarland says.

Synaptics made its everlasting mark back in the 1990s, when it invented the touchpad that’s found on just about every modern laptop. Currently, the company still owns more than 60 percent of the market share. Although its product portfolio is vast and wide-ranging, Synaptics’s biggest revenue drivers currently are the touch and display driver integration and fingerprint authentication solutions for smartphones and notebook PCs. “We’ve been driving these industry transitions,” McFarland says. “Synaptics is, by every measure, the technology leader in our field. We’re the ones people copy.”

But McFarland isn’t tinkering with touch screens. When he came to Synaptics, he was met with an entirely different set of challenges. First and foremost, there was no legal team. “I had to create the legal team and legal processes from scratch,” he says. Luckily, this wasn’t his first rodeo. When recruited from the Korean

JOHN MCFARLAND SVP, GENERAL COUNSEL, SECRETARY

SAN JOSE, CA

Christophe Testi

Irell & Manella salutes

John McFarland

Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Synaptics Incorporated for his exceptional accomplishments and innovative leadership.

We are proud to partner with Synaptics and honored to call John McFarland a friend.

Irell & Manella LLP is a full-service law firm with offices in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, CA. Founded in 1941, Irell is nationally recognized for its litigation and trial, transactions, intellectual property, entertainment, insurance, bankruptcy and tax practices. Irell’s clients include public companies, universities, individuals and leading-edge entrepreneurial companies. For more information, please visit www.irell.com.

“It’s very important to me, personally and to my profession, that we have a diverse legal team.”

JOHN MCFARLAND

law firm Bae, Kim & Lee by MagnaChip in 2004, McFarland was faced with a similar challenge. He was given a team at MagnaChip, but it was composed partly of what McFarland calls “the less than stellar performers” from SK hynix, the South Korean semiconductor juggernaut from which MagnaChip was born.

“They spun off who they didn’t really want around anymore, some of whom were diamonds in the rough,” he says. “But I had to go in and restructure the legal team and hire some new people.” Given McFarland’s relative youth and the fact that MagnaChip filed for Chapter 11 within a few years, the entire experience turned out to be a trial by fire for McFarland.

“It was terrifying,” he says. “I was only a seventh-year attorney at the time, and I became the general counsel of a billion-dollar, multinational company.” Together, he and his team pulled through the Chapter 11 intact. McFarland says the company emerged stronger than before and ultimately went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011.

After nearly a decade at MagnaChip, McFarland was ready to move on with the knowledge that he had built a strong, sustainable legal system. “I put all these processes in place,” he says. “I had hired a great head of IP. I had hired a great head of corporate. I thought that the legal function could succeed without me.”

McFarland says having to build Synaptics’s legal team from the ground up was a difficult but fun task. He began by figuring out if the company had any risks. He then tailored processes to eliminate high risks, to mitigate mixed risks, and to monitor low-impact, lowprobability risks.

Next came standardization. He quickly realized the company had no real legal processes in place. That led McFarland and his initial team to standardizing a series of legal processes and forms to avoid any compliance issues. “Then, we started on the stuff to make our lives easier,” he says. That included building a contract repository and taking a hard look at the company’s legal fees. By bringing all of these processes in-house, he’s managed to cut base

One Firm Worldwide.

Distinction is always confined to the few.

Jones Day congratulates John McFarland on his many outstanding accomplishments.

spending on outside counsel, despite the company doubling its revenue and employees since 2013.

McFarland finds another benefit in building his own legal team: creating a diverse workplace. In fact, all three of his assistant general counsels are women of color.

“It’s very important to me, personally and to my profession, that we have a diverse legal team and that we are able to bring up attorneys—good attorneys that have not had the opportunity or wouldn’t have had the opportunities as I did,” he says. “Diversity is such a core part of this legal team, who we are, what we do, and how we look at the world.”

Although both McFarland’s team and Synaptics itself are in a great place, there are still some intense challenges that come with a young department and a rapidly growing company. “From my standpoint and the legal standpoint, it’s been scary as hell,” McFarland says. “This company was a $600 million start-up with effectively no legal department, and now we have grown to be a $1.7 billion, global company with a legal department, so a lot of the compliance processes weren’t fully formed. That’s been the biggest challenge: getting those compliance processes in place so we don’t get ahead of ourselves in terms of how we’re dealing with these compliance issues as we grow.”

There’s more on the docket, too, including implementing a new FTO program and new e-billing solutions. McFarland is also struggling with monetizing Synaptics’s intellectual property portfolio: “It’s always a little tough when you’re the leader in a particular space,” he says. “When you’re out licensing your IP, you’re facilitating your competitors.”

It’s going to take more than dumb luck to navigate these issues, but the good news is that, though luck might have kick-started McFarland’s career, it certainly hasn’t dictated it.

IRELL & MANELLA LLP IS PROUD TO PARTNER WITH SYNAPTICS AND CONGRATULATES JOHN MCFARLAND ON HIS EXCEPTIONAL CAREER. RANKED NO. 1 ON THE AMERICAN LAWYER’S 2016 A-LIST, IRELL IS A FULL-SERVICE LAW FIRM WITH OFFICES IN LOS ANGELES AND NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA, FROM WHICH WE SERVE CLIENTS WORLDWIDE. RECOGNIZED FOR OUR LITIGATION AND TRIAL, TRANSACTIONS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, ENTERTAINMENT, LIFE SCIENCES, INSURANCE, BANKRUPTCY, AND TAX PRACTICES, CLIENTS TURN TO IRELL DUE TO OUR “STRONG, DEMONSTRATED TRACK RECORD OF SUCCESS” (CHAMBERS USA 2016). OUR FIRM IS BIG ENOUGH TO HANDLE THE LARGEST AND MOST COMPLEX MATTERS, BUT SMALL ENOUGH TO MAINTAIN EXCELLENCE AT EVERY LEVEL.

A MESSAGE FROM WINSTON & STRAWN LLP: JOHN’S BACKGROUND AT MAJOR US AND ASIAN LAW FIRMS, TOGETHER WITH HIS GC EXPERIENCE AT TWO NASDAQ-LISTED GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS, HAS PROVIDED HIM WITH A UNIQUE TOOL SET TO BUILD OUT A HIGHLY RESPONSIVE GLOBAL LEGAL TEAM THAT PARTNERS INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY TO IMPROVE THE BUSINESS IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE WORLD.

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Join the Conversation

Through social media, content marketing, and more, Snap Kitchen’s Tressie Lieberman keeps her company connected with the modern consumer

By BRIDGETT NOVAK

AAccording to Nielsen, five hundred million tweets are sent every day. Although some users are complaining about their bosses or significant others or bragging about their promotions or vacations, more than half—53 percent to be exact—are talking about their favorite companies and products. Does this online chatter have an impact? Apparently so. As many as 74 percent of consumers rely on social media to make their purchasing decisions.

“To be a successful marketer these days, you have to be part of the online dialogue,” says Tressie Lieberman, chief marketing officer at Snap Kitchen. “You should follow relevant users and thought leaders in your community to learn from them and build strong relationships.”

After majoring in advertising at the University of Texas, Lieberman spent two years at Ogilvy & Mather in New York, and then another two at Slingshot, a smaller agency in Dallas. In 2006, she landed a much-coveted position in Pizza Hut’s marketing department. “E-commerce, social media, smartphones—they were all just starting to play major roles in our lives,” she says. “It was a really exciting time, and to have the backing of a big company meant we could try lots of new things.”

Six years later, she moved to Taco Bell, another Yum! Brands giant. Lieberman grew from director of digital marketing and social media to vice president, digital innovation. She focused on finding new ways to engage customers and helped Taco Bell become the first major company to build a community on Snapchat and to launch a mobile ordering app. The app was downloaded two million times in its first four months, and three out of four Taco Bells processed a mobile order on the app’s first day. Lieberman also created promotional content by surprising and delighting customers. In 2013, Taco Bell announced that it was about to launch a Cool Ranch version of its popular Doritos Locos tacos. The social media team was monitoring online conversations to see if interest was brewing, and they scored big when they discovered

that Philip DeFranco, a video blogger and online influencer whose YouTube channel had over 4.8 million subscribers, was tweeting about how anxious he was to taste the new tacos. They sent him cryptic instructions to go to a specific parking lot in Los Angeles, and what he found was a delightful surprise: a blue van with a harp player and a Cool Ranch taco inside. The whole event was filmed, and it turned out to be a great promotion for Taco Bell.

“When we found people talking about the new tacos, we created events and captured their reactions,” Lieberman says. “Each new person that tried the product tweeted their friends. We couldn’t have asked for a better launch. But you can’t accomplish something like that if you aren’t listening to what people are saying about you in real time.”

Although the return on investment for content marketing can be more difficult to track than for traditional approaches, Lieberman claims that whenever the company launched a new product and talked about it first on social media, it would see a measurable lift in sales compared to when it didn’t create advance buzz.

“It’s all part of building momentum,” Lieberman explains. “Movie studios don’t wait until the day a new movie comes out to start talking about it. They build interest, so when it does arrive, the target audience is already pumped. The prelaunch has become very important.”

Another memorable marketing event occurred when a resident of Bethel, Alaska, started an online rumor that Taco Bell was opening there. The company’s social community manager saw the conversation, and the marketing team jumped on it. In a cross-functional team effort, they hooked a taco truck to a helicopter and flew it into Bethel so that residents could try Taco Bell’s new products. The event was filmed, and it garnered lots of headlines. And they did it all in a month. “That’s another thing about the digital world,” Lieberman says. “Conversations are flying so fast. If you don’t respond quickly, the opportunity will be gone.”

TASTY TRENDS

You better strap on a seatbelt if you ask Tressie Lieberman about food trends. “Vegan is really hot, which is why we offer meatless meatballs and fab cakes—our take on crab cakes, which are made from hearts of palm, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and almond flour,” she says. “A lot of people are going flexitarian, which means they omit certain things periodically, which is why we introduced ‘meatless Mondays.’ We also offer cold-pressed juices, gluten-free brownies, and dairy-free chocolate mousse.”

Snap Kitchen’s menu changes every other month. Popular meals have included bison quinoa hash, Nashville hot chicken, and sweet chili-glazed salmon, as well as more familiar items like pancakes and lasagna.

“Whoever your audience is, you should ask yourself: what do they enjoy talking about and how can you fit into their lives in an authentic way? And then join the conversation.”

TRESSIE LIEBERMAN

Tressie Lieberman Chief Marketing Officer

Snap Kitchen Austin, TX

CRAFT IS KING

Since change is the only constant, in February 2016, Lieberman joined Snap Kitchen, an Austin-based start-up that’s focused on healthy, chef-made, grab-and-go meals. “I had an unquenchable thirst for the start-up world,” she says. “I also wanted to get in on the ground floor of what I believe is the future of food. Everyone is so time-strapped, but they also want food that makes them feel good. I just had a baby in August, and having all these wonderful prepared meals has made my life so much easier. I may never cook again.”

Lieberman also likes the opportunity to do more than marketing. “In addition to handling our marketing strategy, communications, e-mail, social media, and loyalty programs, I oversee three chefs and help them stay ahead of food trends,” she says. She also manages a team of field marketers in the metropolitan areas that Snap Kitchen serves: Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Lieberman admits things can be more challenging in a start-up environment. There aren’t all the resources or an existing audience that a big corporation might have. At Snap Kitchen, Lieberman is starting from scratch, so she has to be more creative than ever to pique people’s interest in the burgeoning company. However, she says she’s been fortunate to work with incredible in-house and agency teams who do great work and have fun doing it.

“I always want to keep learning, and every day is new and exciting at Snap,” she says. “Whoever your audience is, you should ask yourself: What are they doing? Where are they spending their time? What do they enjoy talking about, and how can you fit into their lives in an authentic way? And then join the conversation.”

COMMON is a creative accelerator dedicated to building and promoting socially responsible businesses, and ideas that take care of the planet and all the creatures on it. Our collaborative model is powered by a global collection of innovative professionals and creative visionaries with prominent track records in consumer insights, design, marketing, and advertising. Transformative organizations seeking to short circuit the barriers to achieving truly creative ideas that people love benefit from working with curated teams that are capable of generating financial, social, and environmental ROI. #DoShitThatMatterswww.common.is - itmatters@common.is

Based in Portland, OR, eROI crafts amazing digital experiences, starting with why. Our clients are our partners. We’d like to congratulate Tressie Lieberman for her unparalleled achievement—and our unwavering partnership—with Snap Kitchen. We’re thrilled to help you humanize your brand engagement. We’re honored to call you our friend.

VP of Digital Innovation, Infrastructure, and Global Data Operations

The Slicing Edge of Technology

Tim Newton and the Papa John’s tech team develop new ways to order a pizza, twenty-first-century style

By EDDIE O’NEILL

Tim Newton

Papa John’s Louisville, KY

JOIN THE FAMILY

READY TO BECOME PART OF OUR FAMILY OF FRANCHISEES?

If you wanted to order a Papa John’s pizza in 1984, the year the company opened its first stores, you probably would have perused a phone book and called in your order on a touch-tone phone. Now, more than thirty years later, the Papa John’s pizza-ordering experience has become as easy as two or three taps of your finger on an iPhone. That’s the way it should be, according to Tim Newton, vice president of digital innovation, infrastructure, and global data operations for Papa John’s International.

“Here at Papa John’s, we are customer-obsessed,” says Newton, who joined the world’s third-largest pizza delivery company in 2011. “It’s all about the ordering experience. It’s about the customer’s first touch point of technology, whether that is an app or our online ordering platform. We want to make the pizza-ordering experience easy-to-use, seamless, intuitive, and fun.”

In early 2016, Papa John’s expanded its digital ordering experience by becoming the first national restaurant brand to launch an Apple TV app. The technology allows customers to order their favorite pizza from the convenience of their living room, with the option of building their pizza topping by topping. In addition, the new app will give customers an automatic 25 percent discount on the purchase.

“So, there you are with your family,” Newton, a husband and the father of a twelve-year-old daughter, explains. “You are getting set up to watch a movie, and you need to order a pizza. With this app, you can pause your movie and pop over to the app, order your pizza, and then go back to the movie and enjoy your family time.”

The company’s commitment to leading the way in the world of technology is nothing new. The brand was the first national pizza chain with digital ordering at all of its US delivery restaurants in 2001. It was also the first national pizza brand to offer system-wide mobile ordering with SMS text in 2007, the first to launch a nationwide digital rewards program in 2010, and the first to offer gift cards that can be used on mobile devices.

Newton notes that this forward thinking and entrepreneurial spirit has been a perfect match for him. He and the company are not satisfied with the status quo. When he came on board, Papa John’s had around 3,000 stores in the United States and some outdated technology. Today, there are over 4,900 stores globally.

FROM ORDER PLACED TO PIZZA MADE

Tim Newton has only the highest praise for the Papa John’s marketing department, with whom he works closely. “They always have these great ideas and are asking us in IT if it can be done,” he says.

The marketing department’s latest project aims to make tracking customers’ orders easier.

“The idea is that as soon as you order online, you know exactly where your pizza is in the creation and delivery process,”

Newton says. “We’ve ramped up the technology to provide more accurate data related to when your order arrives at the store, when our pizza-makers start to toss our fresh dough, add all of our ingredients, place the pizza in the oven, and perform our quality check before sending it out the door to your location. And here’s an even better thought: what if you could see all of this in real time, with an Uber-like visual of your driver’s location?”

“It’s about the customer’s first touch point of technology, whether that is an app or our online ordering platform.”

“We in the IT group took on the mantra that what got us to the first four thousand stores will not get us to the next four thousand stores,” Newton says. “We’ve made significant investments and improvements to our infrastructure over the past five years. We were using a dial-up, modem-based technology, and now we’re IP-based. We had a secondary data center that was a backup server in a closet in a telecom facility. Now, we have a state-of-the-art secondary data center. Also, the way we deliver the order to the store is more streamlined. It’s been about bringing the technology up to 2016.”

Today, online orders account for 55 percent of all Papa John’s orders. Of these orders, 60 percent come through the company’s mobile apps.

At Papa John’s headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, Newton is one of more than sixty people in his infrastructure group. The company has four IT divisions. He says he couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with.

Newton has always been curious as to how things in technology work. That curiosity was confirmed during his four-year stint in the Marine Corps in the early 1990s, where he worked as an air traffic controller.

“When you leave the military, they test you on what skills and interests you have that would translate into the civilian world,” he says. “I tested high in engineering and programming.”

Furthermore, he notes that he sees a number of similarities between his time in the military and the corporate culture that exists at Papa John’s.

“Papa John’s is an organization that is huge on accountability. Just like in the Marine Corps, you’re always accountable; everybody needs to pull their weight,” he explains. “That’s what I preach around here: We are only as strong as our weakest link. We’re all here for the consumer. You are either a pizzamaker or you help those who are. With that mind-set, success is bound to follow.”

TIM NEWTON

“I Want to Empower People”

Laurie

Robinson Haden,

senior vice president

and

assistant general counsel

for CBS Corporation, combines her passion for law with promoting inclusion

WORDS BY DAVID LEVINE

PHOTOS BY KRISTIN DEITRICH

LAURIE ROBINSON HADEN

SVP, ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL

CBS CORPORATION

NEW YORK, NY

Laurie Robinson Haden was fortunate to grow up in Prince George’s County, Maryland— one of the most affluent African American communities in the United States.

“I grew up in a strong community that consisted of successful doctors, lawyers, engineers, and educators,” she says. “Those in our community had pride and were people to look up to and aspire to become.”

She certainly followed their example, and then some. Now, as senior vice president and assistant general counsel for CBS Corporation, Robinson Haden helps guide legal strategy for the company’s litigation cases. She also works to improve opportunities for people of color through the networking organization Corporate Counsel Women of Color (CCWC), which she launched twelve years ago. “Women of color attorneys like me desired a network of individuals with similar experiences who we could connect and collaborate with and lift one another up as we progressed through our careers,” she says.

Robinson Haden follows in the footsteps of her father, a labor and employment lawyer, who was the only African American in his law school class in the 1960s. “My father engaged me in the practice of law at an early age,” Robinson Haden recalls. “He would let me earn an allowance—three dollars—by helping type some of his case documents.” He passed away during her first semester in law school, but not before he could give her some powerful inspiration. “My father always told me that I had a sharp legal mind and that I would be a successful lawyer,” she says. “No matter what the test, I always remember his words and use them to encourage me at all times.”

Robinson Haden graduated from North Carolina Central University, where she was also named Miss North Carolina Central University. “I was able to serve the community, serve as the

Diversity makes us stronger.

is not an option. How can we advise you on employment issues unless our workforce reflects yours?

Diverse points of view, diverse backgrounds and diverse values make us all stronger.

ALWAYS ON

At Morgan Lewis, we work in collaboration. We work around the clock and around the world—always ready, always on—to respond to the needs of our clients and craft powerful legal and business solutions for them.

“We created an opportunity and opened a door that may not have been otherwise available to these students.”

LAURIE ROBINSON HADEN

university’s ambassador, and develop my leadership skills,” she says. “I remember they would tell us that being on time is being late. To this day, I arrive fifteen minutes early before an appointment so I don’t miss anything.”

She then received her law degree from Indiana University School of Law. During a summer internship working at the National Football League, Robinson Haden made a series of cold calls to various lawyers, including Susan K. Anderson at CBS. “She took time to meet with me, and even after I graduated, we stayed in touch,”

Robinson Haden says. After working at two New York City law firms, Robinson Haden received a call from Anderson about a job opening at CBS. She applied and has now been at CBS for fourteen years.

Robinson Haden started in the CBS Labor and Employment Group, where she conducted training on anti-discrimination and anti-harassment. Then, she worked for the chief legal officer, overseeing the legal department’s administration and operations. In 2010, she helped to launch CBS Corporation’s Records Retention program. Another project she championed is the Pro Bono and Community Outreach program. “We were able to help victims of domestic violence, students in the inner city at area public schools, and the Special Olympics,” she says. “And we helped create a public service announcement with CBS stars to bring awareness to depression and college student suicides.”

Perhaps Robinson Haden is proudest of her role in helping to launch several diversity and inclusion initiatives in the law department, including the Diversity Summer Internship program. “I feel so proud when I see a student who came through our program

now working at the nation’s biggest law firms,” she says. “We created an opportunity and opened a door that may not have been otherwise available to these students.”

Robinson Haden’s passion for diversity led to her to create CCWC in 2004. “My goal then was simply to connect women of color and provide them with a telephone directory resource, where they could pick up the phone or e-mail each other and stay connected,” she says. CCWC has grown from thirty members to more than 3,500 today, and from an old-school phone directory to so much more, including an annual career strategies conference. “The annual conference provides such hope and inspiration to us all, and I am proud to see so many of our members advance to prominent roles within business and the legal professions,” she says. CCWC also offers a program for aspiring lawyers in high school and college and the My Life as a Lawyer scholarship, which has awarded close to $200,000 to date.

Robinson Haden says that CBS is a leader in diversity efforts, which she thinks is more than just the right thing to do. “Profitable companies understand the importance of selling their goods and services to diverse consumers across multiple platforms,” she says. “Diversity at the highest levels of decision making can create a business that is more relevant, competitive, and satisfying to the customers.” Unfortunately, such diversity has not advanced as much as she would hope in corporate America as a whole. “The numbers for women of color ascending to the upper echelons of the corporate infrastructure, including corporate boards, remain steady but have not significantly increased,” she says.

In order to improve, diversity must be part of the overall company culture, she explains. “For diversity to really work in a meaningful and sustainable way, the board, senior leaders, and managers must be engaged,” she advises. “As the nation continues to become more diverse, companies interested in maximizing profits will need to step up to the plate, be counted, and require accountability.”

Robinson Haden includes herself in that directive. “It is best to be a hands-on leader,” she says. “I understand that to get the best result it will not happen through laissez-faire leadership. I want to empower people.”

LITTLER AND DIONYSIA JOHNSON-MASSIE CONGRATULATE LAURIE ON THIS HONOR. WE PROUDLY SUPPORT HER GROUNDBREAKING ACHIEVEMENTS AS A LEGAL THOUGHT LEADER AT CBS AND AS THE CEO OF CORPORATE COUNSEL WOMEN OF COLOR WHERE WE SHARE HER UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO CHAMPIONING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN OF COLOR IN THE PROFESSION.

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STRATEGY

From Reactive to Proactive Law

BT Americas’ Richard Nohe embraces the future by not being afraid of risk

BY MICHAEL HERNANDEZ

With origins in the first commercial telegraph company, BT Group has the longest history in the telecommunications industry. Today, BT Americas operates in twenty-two Latin American countries and has offices in about thirty cities across the United States and Canada, serving companies such as Unilever, PepsiCo, and Mastercard. The past can threaten to hold a company with such an important legacy back when it comes to legal contracting, risk management, and technology. But thanks in part to a service the company calls the “Cloud of Clouds”—which includes global networking, cybersecurity, and distributed computing—BT’s future in the Americas looks even more impressive than its past.

As BT’s general counsel for the Americas region, Richard Nohe understands this better than anyone. He describes lawyers’ traditional approach to the issues he faces today as “driving by looking through the rearview mirror.” As general counsel, he has to contend with issues such as cyberbreaches by various actors, legal jurisdiction over data distributed over multiple servers, and risk contracting that can sometimes become counterproductive.

While the priority of lawyers is to protect their clients from risk as much as possible, the contracts they negotiate so zealously are often based on the past rather than the future. The reactive approach to today’s wide range of technological risks with no history or precedent prevents the kind of innovation that can be achieved by a more proactive approach. What’s more, general counsels like Nohe occupy a unique position above negotiation, where they can see solutions that are more pragmatic and beneficial to all parties involved.

“The role of the general counsel is to be aware of the changes in both technology and law and to try to be proactive rather than reactive,” Nohe says. “The law tends to be backward-looking and historical. It’s based on statutes that have been enacted and case law, which has been based on decisions about facts that have already happened. And when we think about tech, it’s about things that are going to happen in the future.”

RICHARD NOHE GENERAL COUNSEL, AMERICAS REGION

BT AMERICAS

DALLAS, TX

We are proud to support Richard Nohe

General Counsel, BT Americas

Proskauer is a leading global law firm focused on creating value. Our roots go back to 1875, when we were founded in New York City. With more than 700 lawyers active in virtually every major market worldwide, we are recognized not only for our legal excellence, but also our dedication to client service. Our clients include many of the world’s top companies, financial institutions, investment funds, not-for-profit institutions, governmental entities and other organizations across industries and borders.

In fact, Nohe’s career itself is built on reactions to the future rather than overreactions to the past. His academic research in the 1980s, for example, laid both the foundation for his career and the future of telecommunications itself. As a postgraduate researcher at Columbia University in 1989, Nohe researched the analytics of broadband deployment, predicting the infrastructure, funding, and regulation that the kind of networks we use today would require. Ten years later, he was part of a small team that expanded dark fiber networks in Europe for Metromedia (now Abovenet), setting up sixteen different cities across eight countries in only eighteen months. Overcoming the regulatory obstacles alone constituted a major feat. Questions of regulation, jurisdiction, and distributed risk become central when one provides the “Cloud of Clouds.” Nohe describes the challenge thus: “When you look at the pace of technological change, it’s very easy to move data around. However, we need to make sure that the technology is built in a way that complies with the laws and the regulations; both continue to change very rapidly.”

Reactive lawyers on either side of contracting often argue for the other party to take all liability for factors such as data breaches—which, as Nohe points out, is unrealistic from even the most comprehensive insurance. He acknowledges the importance of parsing contracts carefully and stresses the importance of analyzing what the realistic risks are and where they lie. For example, between a bank and its telecom company, it might be ideal to spread risk across a wider base, sometimes incorporating insurance for a less binary solution—especially as the demand for insurance grows.

Although this sounds different from the usual conservative style, Nohe still advocates for prudence; he’s simply not afraid of change and the future. He explains that general counsels should use their expertise to shape law in the best interest of everyone involved.

“We should be looking toward the future and asking what we want the law to be and how can we facilitate for the business client and the consumer client so they can unleash the power of technology in a more productive way,” Nohe says. “Sometimes the law inhibits the use of technology. Sometimes that’s good, and sometimes it’s not. But we need to focus on that so that we’re uninhibiting it for the right reasons.”

While a new approach to risk and contracting can be intimidating, Nohe has found that the proactive approach gets you closer to meeting clients’ needs. “What both sides actually want to do,” he says, “is to flourish, use the technology, and grow.”

Sea Change

By listening to customers and adjusting accordingly, Toni Bianco oversees the most prosperous period of store sales for Long John Silver’s since it was founded in 1969

By JONAS WEIR

For more than two decades, Toni Bianco has been immersed in the food industry, and in that time, he’s worked with giants like and Papa John’s. Now, as the senior vice president of global operations for Long John Silver’s (LJS), he sees opportunities for the company to grow in both domestic and foreign markets. As the world becomes more health- and digital-conscious, Bianco sets LJS’s sails for success in becoming America’s favorite seafood restaurant.

What makes you an effective leader?

Vision and team building are critical to results and success. It’s important to approach business like an entrepreneur and make decisions to benefit the company as a whole. As a member of the executive team, I realize that the decisions I make affect every department—from marketing to culinary innovation, and especially our franchise community—so I’m careful and considerate.

What is your leadership style?

I spend a good deal of time picking the right team members. When it comes to our team executing, I’m pleased with the results. We set strategic goals, and then I give them the space and resources they need. I do my best to remove roadblocks and red tape so they can focus on the task at hand.

You’ve been at LJS for about a year now. What accomplishments are you most proud of?

I am most proud that we’ve reached seventeen consecutive periods of positive comparable store sales, something we haven’t done since we began operating in 1969. This speaks to our commitment to listening to our customers and adjusting as needed. We’ve experienced the best Lent sales in five years and have renewed the focus of the core business value: to become America’s favorite seafood restaurant. We’ve also acquired more than seventy restaurants, which are now corporate-owned and leading the system in comp sales and transactions. This is all part of our rebranding strategy, to focus on our

core gold-standard products. We’re introducing new uniforms, new menu items, and refreshing our website and logo, all while focusing on our current and loyal customers. Our efforts are paying dividends with our current top-ten ranking among quick service restaurants for overall guest satisfaction.

How do you effectively build a team? What kind of person do you look for?

When building a team, I look for more than experience; I look for a fit. My team members not only work well together, but they also inspire each other to achieve. I can teach our business, but I cannot teach the culture, which is an essential part of this job.

Twenty-six years of food experience is a pretty staggering number. What kinds of trends do you see affecting your position?

There’s enormous opportunity in the seafood industry. Pizza, burgers, and sandwiches have all been done, but seafood is a growing sector. It’s healthy and delicious, and there’s a lot of room for our brand to grow, both in the United States and overseas. For example, while some brands struggle in Singapore, we’ve successfully expanded to twenty-five restaurants and have recently signed new deals in the Middle East.

“I can teach our business, but I cannot teach the culture, which is an essential part of this job.”

TONI BIANCO

Toni Bianco SVP Global Operations

Long John Silver’s Louisville, KY

What has the digital transition been like for you?

I have learned that, in this day and age, you must embrace technology. We’re working in all of our stores to improve our processes. With our focus on training, we’ve reduced paper costs by moving all training to a digital platform.

How has your previous experience prepared you for your current role?

In this industry, you see many brands cycle through the same problems, concerns, or issues. By experiencing something similar to this, I’ve learned to use it as a lesson and not to repeat mistakes of the past.

You have a wide range of responsibilities. How is your management structured and how do you exist in multiple arenas concurrently?

I oversee franchise operations, corporate operations, international development, and training. I’m also the key liaison to our supply chain partner, SpenDifference. I have revamped the teams to bring in strong leaders who are willing to take risks. They think outside the box, and this will help take our brand to the next level. We are on the right track, and I’m anxious to see where we grow from here.

Who do you look up to? Do you have a role model? Have you received any great advice that you can remember getting?

My father, who passed away four years ago, has always been my role model. He never worked for anyone and was always an entrepreneur. His work touched many businesses, and he was always a success. The best advice he ever gave was “Be honest in business” and “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

How do you relax?

With every job comes stress, but my wife of nineteen years helps keep me on track. She is always honest and up front in any situation, and I admire her. We always have so much fun together, and my family means the world to me. I would not be who I am today without them.

Inside Intrexon’s Genetic Tool Kit

Andy Last helps Intrexon commercialize biologically based solutions

By DAVID BAEZ

People who work for Intrexon aren’t satisfied with tackling a singular problem. Right now, the company is delivering an eco-friendly food grade microbe used to deliver biotherapeutics; developing a self-limiting insect that passes a lethal gene to offspring to help eliminate the vectors of dangerous diseases; and creating apple varieties that don’t brown when sliced, bitten, or bruised. And these are just a few of the creations the company is developing today.

“The field of engineering biology is expanding rapidly, but it is still underappreciated,” chief operating officer Andrew Last explains. “Intrexon’s mission is to leverage genetic tools to create products that solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, in areas as different as sustainable energy and food production.” Considering it holds the website domain DNA.com, the bold nature of the company’s goals is clear.

Intrexon’s operations are intricately integrated, similar to the double helix of DNA. Last oversees its multiple divisions

and operating subsidiaries, helping increase their execution, effectiveness, and efficiency. All technologies are researched under its operating units and divisions, such as the Agricultural Biotech, Animal Sciences, Industrial Products, and Human Therapeutics divisions. Business development and delivery of solutions happens across five sectors: Health, Food, Energy, Environment, and Consumer.

Each sector head and their team are responsible for helping prospective collaborators understand its capabilities and technologies in order to find common interests. According to Last, Intrexon’s teams are usually met with excitement about the company’s knowhow and platforms for product development. “There are also some challenges when creating things for the first time,” he notes.

Intrexon’s collaborative business model leverages its technology to create a broad range of

Andrew Last Chief Operating Officer

Intrexon Norristown, PA

Michael Harvey

products across multiple industries, and in return they are building a large, diversified portfolio of backend economics when these products are commercialized by their partners.

Intrexon has also acquired companies whose technology is at the forefront of change through the utilization of biology that they look to build upon. Two examples are Oxitec Ltd., the British company that developed the self-limiting mosquito, and Okanagan Specialty Fruits, the pioneering Canadian company behind nonbrowning Arctic apples, which will be sold in US markets this fall.

This all puts the company in a distinctive position, and while there are other companies that have technology in common with Intrexon, Last finds that Intrexon is changing the game with its innovations.

“I don’t think there’s any company out there like us,” he says. “Intrexon has an enviable portfolio of technology platforms, and few others have the comprehensive approach to the field that we do. Because we have the five different sectors and apply our technology across multiple platforms, we make significant learnings at a rapid pace. We can then apply these learnings to develop unique approaches to many problems where conventional approaches are not adequate to solve them.”

Case in point: The eco-friendly food microbe that is the basis for Intrexon’s proprietary ActoBiotics platform. Originally designed to deliver human and animal biotherapeutics, it has now been engineered at Intrexon to successfully work in the protection of crops.

As recently announced by the company, initial studies validated the efficacy of dsRNA for insect control applications using this technology, and with this achievement, Intrexon’s collaboration with a leading global agricultural company has advanced to its next phase of development for bio-based crop protection solutions.

While Intrexon’s business model is carefully structured, its operations are decentralized. The CEO resides in Florida; the CFO works out of Virginia; and Last, who came to Intrexon with over thirty years of experience spanning life sciences—including biotechnology, genomics, clinical diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, and agrochemicals—is located in California.

“People working for Intrexon are in locations spanning North America, South America, and Europe,” he says. “Our diversified business model and fast-paced environment have

“Intrexon has an enviable portfolio of technology platforms, and few others have the comprehensive approach to the field that we do.”

ANDREW LAST

attracted people from all backgrounds to come to work for Intrexon. They share the extraordinary passion we have about our work and commitment to build a leading global company developing important bio-solutions for present and future generations.”

Last joined Intrexon after serving as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Affymetrix, which was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific. He feels Intrexon’s transformative molecular and cellular technology platforms, together with its strong collaborators and partnerships, can considerably broaden the engineering of biology’s impact into new fields and “change the world in a big way.” He predicts major growth for the company in the coming years.

“I think we’re going to be a significantly larger company,” he says. “We will increase the number of collaborations we have now, as well as the number of products we have to offer. As more of our products make it into the marketplace, it will create a higher level of recognition and demand. My expectation is that, five years from now, Intrexon will be established as the ‘go-to’ company for partners who want to unlock the potential of synthetic biology.”

Accountable Leadership

Deputy general counsel Bruce Daise

shares how the legal team’s “businessenabler” approach is moving the needle at H&R Block

There’s a good chance that you are within five miles of an H&R Block retail office at this very moment. The tax services company started in 1955 and has since opened about 12,000 offices worldwide and more than 720 million tax returns have been prepared through its retail locations and DIY products. That kind of volume, history, and success doesn’t come without a strong legal department. Bruce Daise, vice president, deputy general counsel, and chief privacy officer leads H&R Block’s US client services and international legal group. While many in corporate America view legal as an inherent obstacle, Daise is transforming his group into one that partners with internal clients to achieve company objectives. In uncertain times, the strategy helps the company navigate changes and develop new services. This method—the business-enabler approach—has the potential to make a deep impact as H&R Block moves into the future.

YOU PROVIDE LEGAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR ALL OF H&R BLOCK’S TAX BUSINESSES AROUND THE WORLD. WHAT KIND OF TEAM DOES THAT TAKE?

It takes a committed team that buys into our culture. Over fourteen years, I’ve been able to see most of the things the company does. The company has been in Canada and Australia for decades, an emerging operation in India, and franchisees near US military bases around the world. Our group also supports ancillary functions like intellectual property, marketing, and strategic sourcing. So, the team is broad and our members have to be flexible and open-minded.

BRUCE DAISE VP, DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL, CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER

H&R BLOCK

KANSAS

CITY, MO

BY ZACH BALIVA

HOW ARE THINGS CHANGING FOR IN-HOUSE LEGAL DEPARTMENTS?

Budgets are tighter everywhere in corporate America. Everyone is realizing that they have to do more.

We are honored to serve as special tax counsel to H&R Block and to collaborate as a business partner with Bruce and his team. Performance. Excellence. Service.

Christopher S. Rizek and the Tax Controversy Team at Caplin & Drysdale salute

R. Bruce Daise Vice President Deputy General Counsel Chief Privacy Officer

H&R Block

for his many and varied achievements at H&R Block. Bruce exemplifies the values of Performance, Excellence, and Service. We proudly uphold these same values at Caplin & Drysdale.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOU?

Teams like ours are working to demonstrate overall value. We’re here to provide legal advice and services, but we want to do more than just dispense legal advice. We want to uncover new opportunities and enable business decisions to really help meet H&R Block’s strategic goals.

IS THAT EMBRACED BY YOUR COLLEAGUES AND COUNTERPARTS IN VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS?

It’s a welcome change. Many call it the “business-enabler” model. With this approach, legal is involved early and often. We can provide input and help chart a course forward with full transparency.

WHY IS THIS A BETTER WAY?

Often, in large companies, legal is seen as an obstacle to innovation and is therefore engaged later in the process. If that happens, we can make the best of the situation and try to provide quick fixes to avoid trouble. But if we can earn a seat at the table by demonstrating our value in the enabler model, we can give early input to drive informed decisions at every level. We help our business partners examine all angles before deciding on a strategy, and sometimes we even come up with new angles to consider based on our legal knowledge and expertise. The outcomes are better.

WHAT IS THE IDEAL RELATIONSHIP LIKE IN THAT SCENARIO? WHO IS DRIVING THE PROCESS?

I see the business as the ultimate decision maker in most situations, with legal providing input and acting as a guide along the way.

YOU MENTIONED BETTER OUTCOMES. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS PROCESS THAT ENHANCES RESULTS?

It removes the stigma of corporate legal departments as a necessary evil. When they are viewed as the stuffy department to be avoided at all costs, people aren’t motivated to have full and open discussions. They tell the lawyers just enough to get the yes they want. That yes might get them off and running, but it often only delays problems that could have been addressed in earlier stages.

AS A LEADER IN THE DEPARTMENT, HOW DO YOU INSTILL THIS PHILOSOPHY?

We need our business colleagues to embrace the approach, but there are certain things we need to do as lawyers to execute it well. I ask my team to keep an open mind. We should avoid the tendency to manage risk by saying no and then moving on. We need to get creative and find solutions and options that overcome obstacles. We should be providing new ways to get the client where they want to go, but in a way, that’s risk-appropriate for the company. Also, we have tremendous top-down support from our GC, which reinforces this as a top priority.

HOW DO YOU VIEW A NO?

As a last resort. Sometimes a no is required if we look at an issue from ten angles and it’s still something we just can’t do. Our goal is to keep H&R Block within our risk tolerance. Lawyers have to recognize when we’re approaching dangerous territory. But an absolute no should be rare.

WHAT ARE THE BEST WAYS TO BECOME A BUSINESS ENABLER?

I think there are three important aspects to this. First and foremost, you have to know the business. We encourage our lawyers to get in the field and visit our offices during tax season to see what employees do and how customers experience us. Our employees get their taxes done in H&R Block offices or through our DIY tax preparation software so they can experience our products and services first hand. Also, to better understand the critical role of our tax preparers, we encourage our employees to take the H&R Block tax prep class.

Next, you have to know your internal clients and what they want. You have to invite yourself to the party. People don’t generally exclude lawyers from a meeting intentionally; they just don’t think it’s necessary to have us there. But we can spot issues from afar. We also work to read between the lines and understand what a client is trying to do even if they don’t say the exact words or articulate their plan in a specific way.

The third thing you have to do is play offense. Lawyers can get stuck in defense mode, but we can also create value. We are aggressive in going after competitors if they engage in unlawful activities or violate certain agreements. We can help create future value through IP and patents, and that’s important.

WHEN YOU DISCUSS BEST PRACTICES, DO YOU ALSO DISCUSS PITFALLS TO AVOID?

Legal has to know its role. We are a support function. There’s no silver bullet. Success comes over time as you build credibility.

YOU’RE ALSO PASSIONATE ABOUT TEAM DEVELOPMENT. HOW DOES THE ENABLER MODEL PLAY INTO A STRONG TEAM?

People in the department feel valued and empowered to make a difference. They feel a higher sense of purpose.

HOW DO YOU HOPE TO BUILD ON THESE STEPS IN 2017 AND BEYOND?

We make approximately 75 percent of our revenue during tax season, so we mainly focus on execution during that time. When the season winds down, we use this approach to plan and strategize for next tax season. But we’re also looking at new products and services. We can really dig in and understand how our department can work in a new way to help move an iconic American company forward.

GRAY PLANT MOOTY IS HONORED TO HAVE WORKED CLOSELY FOR MANY YEARS WITH BRUCE DAISE AND HIS TEAM AT H&R BLOCK, DEFENDING THE COMPANY’S INTERESTS AND DEVELOPING CREATIVE SOLUTIONS TO THE LEGAL ISSUES ARISING IN ITS DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING OPERATIONS.

JACKSON LEWIS P.C. IS A LAW FIRM WITH MORE THAN EIGHT HUNDRED ATTORNEYS IN MAJOR CITIES NATIONWIDE SERVING CLIENTS ACROSS A WIDE RANGE OF PRACTICES AND INDUSTRIES. HAVING BUILT ITS REPUTATION ON PROVIDING PREMIER WORKPLACE LAW REPRESENTATION TO MANAGEMENT, THE FIRM HAS GROWN TO INCLUDE LEADING PRACTICES IN THE AREAS OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, HEALTHCARE, AND SPORTS LAW. THE FIRM’S COMMITMENT TO CLIENT SERVICE, DEPTH OF EXPERTISE, AND INNOVATION DRAWS CLIENTS TO JACKSON LEWIS FOR EXCELLENT, VALUE-DRIVEN LEGAL ADVICE.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE FIRM CAN BE FOUND AT JACKSONLEWIS.COM.

Eyes on the Road

Cindy Hillaby balances analytics with service at CAA to enable safer drivers on Ontario’s streets

By LORI FREDRICKSON

TThroughout her career in human resources, Cindy Hillaby has always taken pride in identifying the right talent to build a company’s performance and growth. “My raison d’être is to make a positive difference and to look for how to continue to improve,” she says. “I always wanted to work for a company that had integrity for what it did and why it did it.”

That ethos is what drew Hillaby to join the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA), which she says was a diamond in the rough when she arrived in 2001. She joined the nonprofit as vice president of human resources for the CAA South Central Ontario office after working for companies in the financial service industry. CAA’s leadership and passion for taking care of its members had impressed her, so she made the switch.

Nine years later, Hillaby was promoted to vice president of membership and automotive services. Now, her day-to-day work centers on ensuring that the Ontario region’s two million members are protected through

1.2 million service events, which are both big and small and range from vehicle breakdowns to battery replacements to automobile lockouts.

Most recently, Hillaby and her team have invested in using business analytics to provide CAA members with the best and safest service in the industry. “Our CEO has played a critical role in fostering and challenging our thinking for our continual improvement,” she says. “We have spent the past year laying this foundation and look forward to continual efficiency and improvement.”

Some of the most monumental work involves analyzing data to build predictive analytic capability, which ensures that the right types of service vehicles are in the right locations at the right times. “We collect data on every call,” she says. “We’re able to get real-time information about where calls are coming from and when, so we can see a pattern if it develops and then forecast what we can expect in the future. We’ve been able to transform that data through business intelligence tools so that we

CAA South Central Ontario

East Thornhill, ON

Cindy Hillaby VP, Membership & Automotive

MAKING TRAVEL SAFER

CAA is committed to social responsibility through the programs it provides and sponsors.

For example, the CAA School Safety Program trains more than twenty thousand student volunteers each year to provide school bus boarding and crosswalk safety assistance.

Other programs include the Great Waterfront Trail Adventure, which provides free roadside assistance to cyclists on bike tours along Ontario’s Great Lakes, and Hope Air, a charity that arranges free airfare travel to connect financially disadvantaged Canadians with healthcare.

Carole B. Eves

have visual aids to see where calls are occurring to get to our members safely and quickly and continually improve our performance.”

Beyond data, Hillaby also envisions a future where mobile technology plays an integral part in taking care of CAA members on the road. One of her early accomplishments involved introducing mobile devices in contracted service vehicles to streamline dispatching and service delivery. Since then, building on the rapid developments in digital and mobile, CAA has worked to use new tools to improve its services.

Making bad days good. And good days better.®

We are Canada’s largest automobile association with over 2 million Members. We offer a number of products and services, including:

• Roadside assistance

• Home and auto insurance

• Travel insurance

• Travel services

• Member savings and rewards

We are also a strong advocate and voice for our Members on issues such as road safety, mobility, infrastructure and consumer rights.

We know that the needs of our Members are diverse and important. That’s why we look for high performers who want to make a difference every day they’re at work.

If this sounds like you, we invite you to check out the career opportunities at caasco.com/careers.

The evolution of smartphones has allowed members to stay connected with CAA, and in turn, it has enabled the CAA to track members’ coordinates, which led to the organization developing its Service Tracker app. Members can track their service vehicle with a visual application that shows the vehicle’s location in real time and provides users with an estimated wait time. They can download the CAA app in iTunes or Google Play, and CAA’s call receivers also e-mail a link to that visual after a call has been placed.

Outside of ensuring immediate service, Hillaby says CAA is also extremely focused on advocating for the safety of its members and drivers. Her team was influential in encouraging the Ontario government to pass the Slow Down and Move Over legislation, which alerts motorists to reduce speed and pull over to the side of the road when they see the amber lights of a tow truck. “When there’s a service event, it’s not just our members’ lives that are at risk; it’s also the service providers,” Hillaby says. “We want to make sure that they have a safe place to work.”

The organization is also involved in other safety programming, such as the CAA School Safety Patrol program and its own safety curriculum for service drivers, which includes a comprehensive set of training requirements to ensure that providers are aware of protocols.

Knowing that her work is helping people in real and necessary ways has been incredibly satisfying for Hillaby. “When I came here, it was amazing how people were so committed to protecting the members,” she says. “Having a vehicle break down can be one of the most terrifying situations. People know that we can be trusted to come to their rescue.”

From her prior positions in human resources to the role she has today, Hillaby is glad that she’s been able to help build her organization.“I take pride in the number of calls from members that say, ‘Thank you for helping us,’” she says.

How Data Security Makes Flying Fearless

Rich Licato uses education and awareness to keep sensitive information safe at the Airlines Reporting Corporation

By SAM WILLET

If you’ve purchased a plane ticket online through a thirdparty outlet like Expedia, Travelocity, or your neighborhood travel agency, Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) is the company that settles the transaction between you and your ticket-seller. The company has been serving airlines, travel agencies, and other related travel services for more than thirty years. Today, its data warehouse holds 60 percent of all of the world’s ticket transactions.

With high volumes of data being processed every day, ARC needs someone like Rich Licato. As the company’s chief information security officer, Licato’s top priority is to protect ARC’s data and to stop cybercriminals from stealing sensitive information. In fact, throughout his career, he has been a leader in raising awareness for data protection. Prior to joining ARC, Licato managed information systems for federal home loan lender Fannie Mae for nearly seventeen years, including a stint where he advised the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Now, he is at the helm of information security in an even more specialized industry.

What does the role of chief information security officer at ARC entail?

ARC is an airlineowned company, and we accredit travel agents in the United States and handle back-end ticket settlements. There are two ways to buy an air ticket: you can go directly to an airline’s site or an online or local travel agent. All payments outside of the airline’s website come through us.

We make money in two different ways: through fees associated with airline agency transactions and through providing data and analytical tools to our customers to help them make fact-based decisions. My role as chief of information security is to protect our data, systems, and premises at all times.

What types of events do you work to avoid?

There could be a data incident, where someone has access to our information that shouldn’t, or a service disruption. People do this in a lot of malicious ways, like someone

Rich Licato CISO Airlines Reporting Corporation Arlington, VA

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trying to shut down your website or interfere with a communication source.

I’ve always stood up for protecting data. I’ve implemented programs from the ground up or reset departments when they have a broken infrastructure. I’ve done that in several different roles, whether it involves enterprise architecture, information security, or risk management. In each, it’s all about taking stock of what you’re doing at the moment, doing some analysis, and then executing a vision to make a positive change.

How do you stay on top of all these risks?

The best way to keep up to date involves reading current security publications, newsfeeds, and blogs; talking with colleagues; and meeting with other CISOs to hear about their challenges. There are also informationsharing organizations called ISACs, or information sharing and analysis centers, and we subscribe to two of them: one for financial services and another for the aviation industry. They give real-time updates of what people are experiencing and how to avoid attacks.

What are some challenges you’ve encountered in your role?

The threats are ever-changing. We’ve seen a huge explosion in ransomware within the past year, where someone can hold up your business at any moment. There’s also targeted spear-phishing, which pinpoints specific business executives and tries to manipulate them to compromise the organization. It’s easy to become fatigued in keeping up with these programs and how they change, so building awareness is always difficult.

What did you learn from working and living in Hong Kong?

I learned how companies and organizations are built from the ground up and to always look at the big picture. When I arrived in Hong Kong, our goal was to build a new organization—the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation—for the country’s government. The business provided a secondary mortgage market to its citizens, which was previously unavailable. I was there to advise them from a technology perspective, but there was much more to consider. We started with two employees and no business model or building, so we had to start from scratch. When I left a year later, it had everything it needed: a great location, set of employees, technology, etc.

I had to understand all aspects of the business and was involved daily with legal, finance,

human resources, and operations. It was something I took with me to future positions.

I enjoyed learning about the numerous cultures based in Hong Kong and did every touristy thing possible. I also learned how to properly use chopsticks, which was useful.

What was ARC’s culture like before your arrival?

Luckily, the culture was security-aware when I came, but it was narrowly focused. It was only concerned with credit card information. We had to identify other sensitive information we might have beyond that. I think informing the organization of this possibility caused a cultural shift. Now, we are very security-aware and focus on all sensitive information.

How can you best protect ARC and its people?

The best way is through education. Our employees are the first and last line of defense, and their perseverance will help us succeed in any situation. To do that, I need to always be conscious of where the company stands, its goals and visions, and how the threats are changing. Then, we can adjust our cultural makeup to match any alterations. It’s kind of like playing a cat-and-mouse game with your adversaries, but it’s important to take the process seriously, or we could be in a tough situation.

What are some of your proudest achievements at ARC, and what are your goals for the future?

I’m very proud of the risk management program we have implemented and our ISO27001 certification, especially since we’ve maintained that since 2013. When I first arrived at ARC, only a few employees made up the security organization with limited services, and we have fifteen or so now. Both of those achievements will help us preserve and continuously upgrade our program over time. We’re concentrating on doing much more improvement and moving services to the cloud in 2017. Everyone at ARC will make that possible, not just my team.

What makes you passionate about your job?

I’m responsible for making sure nothing bad happens. I enjoy working to succeed in that mission, and it makes me passionate for what I do. It’s a challenge, but I strive to provide an important service with my responsibility.

Happy to Be a Generalist

For Andrean Horton, executive vice president and chief legal officer at A. Schulman, wide-ranging experience is the sweet spot for her work as in-house counsel

In a world that increasingly calls on specialists in all areas of business, including the law, Andrean Horton happily says that being a legal generalist suits her just fine.

“You have to get comfortable knowing what you don’t know,” says Horton, executive vice president and chief legal officer at A. Schulman. “Early in your career, someone says, ‘Here’s a real estate issue,’ and you have to figure out how to tackle that. You come to a level of comfort that you are not a specialist. You issue-spot and know when to bring in experts. That has been extremely helpful to me, and by the time I came to A. Schulman, I had learned how to be effective in tackling these issues.”

Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, A. Schulman, Inc. is a leading international supplier of high-performance plastic compounds and resins. Horton assumed her current role in September 2016, but the road there was paved with other jobs and duties that forged her generalist philosophy.

A native of Warren, Ohio, Horton was always interested in history, politics, and English. “Although my mom says that when I was eight years old, I said I wanted to be a lawyer or a psychiatrist,” she says, laughing.

Horton eventually went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Michigan and a law degree from Case Western Reserve University. “I was always intrigued that lawyers seemed to know things other people don’t know,” she says. “It’s like they have a secret key to the law that no one else has. I wanted to know what they know.”

ANDREAN HORTON EVP, CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER

A. SCHULMAN

FAIRLAWN,

OHIO

BY DAVID LEVINE

Horton was especially interested in international politics and law, but she also enjoyed business law. In fact, she says that contracts law was her favorite class. Her first job was practicing general business and commercial litigation law at Cleveland law firm Calfee, Halter, and Griswold, where she had interned while in law school. In her time at the firm, Horton gained valuable experience and learned a lot about practicing law.

Frantz Ward is proud to recognize Andrean Horton, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of A. Schulman, for her achievements, dedication and contributions to the community.

About two and a half years later, she was recruited as in-house counsel for a trucking company now known as YRC Worldwide. “A mentor of mine said she was aware that YRC was looking for a labor and employment attorney, and that was an interest of mine,” Horton says. “Part of the appeal of the job was being told I could help craft what this department looks like and how we move forward.”

After that initial focus at YRC Worldwide, she was later promoted to assistant general counsel, at which point she handled general legal matters and eventually earned a promotion to vice president of legal and regulatory compliance. In that role, Horton learned what an in-house lawyer’s role in a company should be. “A mentor there told me, ‘You’re not the one that makes the company money,’” she recalls. “‘It’s the drivers and the dock workers who make money for the company, and your role is to support them and the operations team that supports them.’ She was saying, ‘It’s not about you; it’s about the business.’ It was a good reminder of what the focus should be.”

From there, Horton moved to Detroit and took a position with the Bartech Group, a workforce management firm, in part to further her generalist tendencies. “I was getting excellent operations experience, but I wasn’t getting experience working with a board of directors,” she says. “Going to Bartech was to get that experience of being counsel to an executive management team.” After gaining that experience, she and her husband, a Cleveland native, decided they wanted to move closer to home. When someone sent her a job description for a position at A. Schulman, noting that she would be perfect for the job, Horton had to agree.

She joined in 2010 as senior corporate counsel for the United States, Latin America, and Canada. Over the years, Horton added other responsibilities, including managing the company’s global intellectual property portfolio; she even had a brief stint in human resources. In 2015, Horton was promoted to assistant secretary to work with the board of directors, and in 2016, she was promoted to her current position. She is now responsible for legal support of the board of directors and for the entire corporate legal function in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

That’s where all of her previous experience has come to play. “I enjoy dealing with all aspects of law that touch the company, from real estate to labor and employment to environmental,” Horton says. “I enjoy touching all those areas and shaping our internal practices and procedures. I decided long ago that was my sweet spot, and I have been fortunate that each move I made allowed me to add on additional experience.”

FRANTZ WARD LLP CONGRATULATES ANDREAN HORTON ON HER WELLDESERVED RECOGNITION. THROUGH EVERY STEP OF HER CAREER, ANDREAN HAS EARNED THE REPUTATION OF A TRUSTED LEGAL ADVISOR. ANDREAN’S ABILITY TO QUICKLY GRASP HER INTERNAL CLIENT’S NEEDS, ALONG WITH HER PRACTICAL, COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO THE PRACTICE OF LAW, HAS SERVED TO DISTINGUISH HER AMONGST HER PEERS. FRANTZ WARD IS PRIVILEGED TO PARTNER WITH A. SCHULMAN AND ANDREAN TO HELP MEET THEIR LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT NEEDS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.

Always Learning New Tricks

Michael Rist and VIP Petcare are dedicated to improving the lives of pets and the people who love them

By KELLI LAWRENCE

AAs a native of Denmark who gained international finance and business experience before settling in the United States two decades ago, Michael Rist approaches his role as CFO of VIP Petcare with a nuanced perspective. He embraces his experience from a mix of public and private companies that range from young firms to multibillion-dollar global corporations. Consequently, he knows what it takes to create and support long-term, sustainable growth.

“Being part of an organization with a very entrepreneurial culture means people innovate, accept responsibility for work they are not always proficient at, make decisions decisively and efficiently, and demonstrate a sense of urgency and ownership for their work,” he says. “Coming up in public accounting teaches you that sensibility.”

Rist’s public accounting experience provides him with a great foundation, working with a variety of clients of different size, across different industries. It has also enabled Rist to be a more agile leader. From early on in his career, he’s been training and developing people, and he’s found it exciting to see people grow over the years.

Thirteen years in public accounting with Deloitte, followed by almost ten years in the satellite industry and several years of consulting work, led Rist to California. Before moving in-house, he first consulted for VIP Petcare, an industry leader in innovative pet wellness care that is offered through a nationwide network of community clinics.

In 2015, Rist joined as CFO and a member of the executive team. With the organization’s double-digit growth in mind, Rist’s attention to people, processes, and technology is as critical as his finance focus.

Far too often, business transformation efforts concentrate on the process improvement strategies and business process re-engineering, while essentially ignoring the people aspect of the change initiative. Subsequently, these transformation initiatives do not achieve their desired results, according to Rist, who was part of the successful transformation of SES Engineering. Focusing on developing critical organizational competencies around organizational culture transformation and process improvement resulted in a more effective and sustainable change effort.

“As our organization continues to grow, a key objective for me is to ensure that we recruit and retain the right talent, that we have the right programs and benefits to enable them to perform at their best,” Rist says. “The things we can control are the easy part; what keeps me up at night are the changes we have no control over, such as changes in the regulatory environment.”

Technology also plays an important role in the company’s overall strategy. “There are constantly expanding opportunities for us to improve service offerings,” he adds.

However, the rate of change also presents some challenges: the need to balance demands and manage risks while simultaneously maximizing earnings.

Michael Rist CFO

VIP Petcare Windsor, CA

Michael Rist earned his bachelor’s degree from the Copenhagen Business School, and his MBA from Villanova University.

IRONMAN

Michael Rist is an avid triathlete. In fact, he has participated in three full Ironman competitions—each of which consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride, and a marathon 26.22-mile run—and more than a dozen 70.3 Ironman competitions, events which many consider to be the most challenging fitness level available for a one-day event. Rist says parallels between triathlon success and business success can be found at every turn.

“Having the curiosity, vision, guts, and discipline for such a daunting mission in front of you is a big challenge,” he says. “When you’re racing, things come up you haven’t necessarily planned for. You have to adapt and stay focused on the task at hand; it’s not very different from the business world.”

Like many busy professionals, Rist, who lives with his family in northern California, has had to work at making space for triathlons. But he believes the events have played an important part in his success. ”The people who are balanced in their lives are much happier,” Rist says. “And happier people are way more engaged and effective in their work.”

Through all the growth Rist has helped foster, his European background—which stresses not only efficiency, particularly with regards to time, but also more inclusiveness— has benefited him. However, he also stresses the importance of being both tough-minded and tenderhearted. “It’s about having a vision of where you want to take the organization, knowing what the end game is, knowing how to get there, and surrounding yourself with people who support and embrace that mission,” he says.

In many respects, he attributes his success to his considerable efforts as an Ironman triathlete. The need for ample preparation, adaptability, and perseverance are all in the full day’s work of long-distance swimming, cycling, and running. “Conditions change along the way, and there are a lot of reasons why not to continue,” says Rist, who did his first Ironman in 2001. “But there’s a reason to move forward, and you’ve got to find that reason within yourself. That’s what we try to do at VIP Petcare.”

He may aim for continued progress, but Rist doesn’t see that goal bringing any sort of end to the entrepreneurial nature of VIP Petcare. “I think that spirit is one of the cornerstones of the organization,” he says. “It allows us to make a go at new things—the ability to learn from that experience, then move forward again.”

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Growing Business by Growing Employees

How Cindy Zobian and Crystal & Company have fostered a culture where employees feel empowered to make decisions and ask questions

By CHRIS GIGLEY

Cindy Zobian wakes up every day knowing she has options at New York-based insurance brokerage Crystal & Company. Part of its employee-driven culture is promoting a work-life balance with initiatives such as work-from-home days. But Zobian, the company’s executive managing director in charge of leading the firm’s national private client services business, is herself often driven to go into the office.

“I was lucky that I fell into the insurance industry and loved it,” she says. “It’s something you can find a passion for because you feel like you give back to people and help them.”

Established in 1933, Crystal & Company has more than 400 employees spread throughout its New York headquarters and ten regional offices. The company currently places more than $1 billion in premiums annually in the global insurance marketplace.

Crystal & Company hired Zobian in 2004. She had already been in the insurance business for more than a decade, beginning with a parttime job at Chubb Insurance in 1990 while she finished college. After graduating, Zobian joined Chubb full-time.

For a short period of time, she worked in commercial claims, and then she found her home in personal insurance. After four years on the carrier side with Chubb, Zobian moved over to the brokerage side of the business and has been there ever since.

“What I enjoy most about personal insurance is the one-on-one aspect, dealing directly with clients and developing an in-depth

understanding of what is really important to them,” she says. “Children and family come first, of course, but then you get into the physical assets and learn what their passions are. You get a feel for their buying habits, whether it’s a watch collection or classic cars, and it gives you great insight into their personality.”

Zobian says she likes to get down into the nitty-gritty to understand how clients think and what’s important to them. That way, it’s easier to work with them and come up with new ideas that best serve their individual needs.

Zobian is responsible for Crystal & Company’s national private client business, a growing sector that makes up about 20 percent of the firm’s total revenue. By implementing a consultative approach, Zobian and her team address the insurance needs of those who require a sophisticated approach to personal risk management and wealth protection.

Executive Managing Director, Private Client Services

Zobian is well-known and respected in this space. Although she has many responsibilities, her main focus is maintaining and growing a profitable business. This means providing additional training and empowering employees to explore new ways to reach their clients.

Employee engagement is a key part of Crystal & Company’s corporate culture and has also become one of Zobian’s greatest strengths. She makes it a priority to keep every team member involved.

“You don’t get as much one-on-one time with employees as the business and the teams grow,” she says. “It’s still important to me to really know your team. I want to know my employees and make sure they understand they’re not alone.”

The company has made supporting employees’ work-life balance and career fulfillment a priority. Zobian, who enthusiastically supports these initiatives, once refused to accept an employee’s resignation because it was based solely on geography. Zobian encouraged her to remain on board, work remotely, and continue to grow with the company. That was five years ago, and that colleague is still a member of the private client team and has even recently taken over additional responsibilities, advising high-net-worth art collectors.

“The world is changing,” she explains. “No one has to be in the office every day in order to be successful at their job. I was the first employee at the company to work remotely, and technological advances have made working from home much easier than it used to be. With things like video conferencing and instant messaging, it’s as if someone is sitting right next to you.”

To enhance the work-from-home option, Zobian’s group has also piloted a program where employees share desks and alternate schedules.

“You have the hustle and bustle when you’re at the office, then you have the benefit of being able to focus on work without distractions

Cindy Zobian

Crystal & Company New York, NY

when you’re at home,” she says. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

Zobian also cochairs Crystal & Company’s employee recognition subcommittee, which recognizes and rewards employees who go above and beyond their day-to-day responsibilities. She acknowledges that the company culture is continuously evolving, and she’s thrilled that Crystal is dedicated to that mission.

Zobian cites a number of internal programs that have been implemented, including the following: employee wellness programs that provide healthy snacks and discounted gym memberships; a monthly Lunch with Leaders, in which senior Crystal executives discuss topics that range from current insurance market conditions to career goals; CrystalCares, an employee-organized-and-run volunteering initiative that supports the local community; a pilot program that allows colleagues to work from other offices around the country; and a wingman program, which encourages colleagues to disconnect and enjoy their time off by assigning dedicated backups when they are away from the office.

Considering the many exciting employee initiatives such as these, Zobian not only feels lucky about landing in an industry she loves, but she also feels lucky about landing at a company she loves just as much.

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Altra Industrial Motion Corp. CIO Rick Klotz makes an industrial company flourish in the technological age

By JOE DYTON

Sometimes all it takes is one request to change someone’s career trajectory forever. Take Rick Klotz—chief information officer of Altra Industrial Motion Corp., a publicly traded manufacturing company that specializes in motion control products. Klotz was a marketing professional for the first eleven years of his career. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, his advertising and sales promotion office became infused with Macintosh computers. The IT director needed help putting together the company’s network and tapped Klotz to move to IT and help lead the local area networking effort.

Klotz took on that challenge, in spite of advice from his boss and others recommending not to join the IT team. The historical perception of IT as a slow-moving and controlling group was seen by many as a limiting factor, but he felt it was the right thing to do. He thought he could use his aptitude and abilities to see how much the company could use technology, and the rest was history. Klotz saw the potential for change by leveraging new technology to drive process improvement, so he engaged as a team member in helping build a new order management system for the business.

Klotz has led IT through a number of changes in structure and ownership since 2000 and became Altra’s chief information officer in 2008. “I’m really a businessperson who happens to have a good understanding of technology and how we can use technology to run the business and improve business processes,” Klotz says. “I’m not a coder by vocation, nor am I a hacker or anything like that. I took BASIC and COBOL programming classes in college and a special studies course in operations research around critical path management. It whet my appetite for what computers can do, and I’ve seen amazing changes in technology since the early 1980s. I’m really a business guy who evangelized technology while learning it.”

Klotz’s work today includes integrating acquired businesses, consolidating operating units to keep the company’s cost structure under control, mapping out strategies for moving production from one plant to another, managing infrastructure changes, and switching to SAP. A continuing effort to build an effective global IT leadership team and structure is also a critical focus.

“There’s never a moment where there aren’t significant projects, improvement initiatives, and opportunities to move commodity IT services to the cloud,” Klotz says.

“It’s a wide variety of things related to technology, networking, and software IP systems, and then there’s integration of new acquisitions.”

Klotz’s switch to the IT side of things couldn’t have come at a better time. After being part of other companies, including Dana Corporation, Altra Industrial Motion formed in 2004. The good news was that the company was now independent; the bad news was that it lost the technological support that comes with being part of a $15 billion company. With a lean, forty-person IT team, Klotz and his team were now spending 70–80 percent of their time on tasks that were not adding value to the company, such as maintaining equipment, resolving network events, responding to emergencies, and fixing e-mail problems. Multiple legacy ERP systems sustained application system complexity, and thin support structures for each system were a daily challenge in supporting the business improvement activities.

Rick Klotz CIO

“Something would happen in the middle of the night, and we would have to intervene, and the next day, you’re half

Altra Industrial Motion Corp. Braintree, MA

asleep still supporting the business,” Klotz says. “It was really not the best position to be in. We realized if we want to get close to the business, if we want be part of lean thinking and helping a business leverage technology, we have to stop managing it hands-on and be more engaged in helping people use technology and help them see how they can use IT to do things faster, cheaper, and easier.”

Two of the biggest steps toward helping Altra employees get a better grasp of technology and make IT more efficient came when the organization incorporated SAP and the Microsoft Cloud. The first Altra business unit went live on SAP in August 2010. Altra now has more than twenty businesses on SAP, with a few more to convert. It’s been a crucial effort in giving the business a common data model, a shared customer view, a common supplier profile, and a global material database so that the company can truly start to see how it’s performing financially, through sales and inventory management. It is yielding benefits in helping Altra see the whole business globally.

Three years ago, Klotz and his team helped usher in the Microsoft Cloud, and now the company has 2,400 people around the globe on the Office 365 Cloud. Instead of IT having to run everything itself, Microsoft manages the “engine,” and the team can focus on the business and show employees how to use technology like SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Skype for Business, instant messaging, oneto-one video conferencing, and Yammer, an enterprise social networking tool.

“We are really getting the leverage out of the Microsoft agreement,” Klotz says. “We don’t have to overmanage it. We help people use the technology provided, and then we monitor performance and see if we’re actually getting more people to use technology. It was quite a transition from the old school, where IT procured, configured, and managed everything.”

Klotz turned out to be ahead of the game a few years ago when the company’s CEO approached him about creating a “Facebook for Altra.” The CEO wanted a way for employees to be able to informally connect with one another and share ideas. Klotz informed him that, thanks to the Microsoft agreement, the company had access to Yammer, which could serve this purpose. Yammer was presented at a global meeting in mid-2015. IT had engaged with a Yammer deployment partner to prepare and facilitate the launch. Three hundred people had already

“I’m really a business guy who evangelized technology while learning it.”

RICK KLOTZ

registered and were actively using it with minimal training required.

“For me, it was one of the biggest smiles that I’ve ever produced,” Klotz explains. “Sometimes, being a CIO can be a little stressful. But seeing people quickly adopt a new tool, learn it by doing, and encourage others to register and start Yammering was powerful. IT led the effort and gave the business a new capability to increase collaboration and interaction globally.”

As it turns out, there was nothing to worry about with Yammer. More than 50 percent of Altra’s Office 365 users are actively engaged with Yammer, and there’s a group of about 100 people around the world who are using it to collaborate on new product development ideas.

“Enterprise social can present some legal and HR concerns around acceptable and appropriate use,” Klotz says. “IT worked with legal and HR, updated the social media policies and guidance, and took some risk. People generally know what to do, how to do it, and have a good sense of what they should or should not communicate on Yammer. It has been a great experience for Altra to get people to share ideas, discuss opportunities, and collaborate on projects. To me, most of what the IT team and I do is look for opportunities to influence the business, coach our leadership around what we could do, and leverage what we already have access to. We just have to partner with you to make it happen.”

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The Pursuit of Perfection

Datalogic chief intellectual property counsel Paul Maltseff knows that nobody’s perfect, but believes everyone can try to be

BY JOE DYTON

Paul Maltseff understands perfection will always be a bit out of reach, but that doesn’t mean he’s ever going to stop striving for it.

Maltseff is the group chief intellectual property counsel of the international company Datalogic, with headquarters in Bologna, Italy, and multiple divisions located in areas such as Eugene, Oregon, and Telford, Pennsylvania. The company is a global leader in the automated data capture and industrial automation markets, and it specializes in barcode readers, sensors for detection, measurement, safety, vision systems, and laser market systems production. Datalogic’s innovation solution offerings also extend to a number of industries that include retail, transportation, logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare.

In other words, providing clients with accurate information is paramount for Datalogic.

As group chief intellectual property counsel, Maltseff’s main responsibility is to take care of the company’s intellectual capital. While other areas of the company are on offense to help the company produce and expand, he is playing a key defensive role to protect Datalogic’s well-being, whether it’s intellectual, financial, or otherwise.

“The company is similar to the universe,” Maltseff says. “Intellectual property is one of the fundamental components of this universe. It could be used as a sword or a shield of the company: the sword to attack, the shield to defend. That’s what I do.”

Maltseff’s drive for perfection began long before he started his tenure at Datalogic. He worked with the Mozhaysky Military Aerospace Engineering Academy (MMAEA) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, early in his career, where he learned an important lesson: the only acceptable level of performance is uncompromised perfection.

“It doesn’t matter what you do; what matters is perfection,” Maltseff says. “Vince Lombardi, the former pro football coach, once said, ‘Perfection isn’t attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.’ That is what is required to be successful.”

PAUL MALTSEFF

CHIEF IP COUNSEL

DATALOGIC

EUGENE, OR

IP Law Group is proud of its longstanding business relationship with Datalogic S.p.A. and Paul Maltseff.

206.622.4900 701 Fifth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104 www.SeedIP.com

OFF THE CLOCK WITH PAUL MALTSEFF

Paul Maltseff’s storied career doesn’t just include numerous degrees and high-level technology and legal positions. He also holds thirty-one US patents and has authored more than fifty published pieces. His patents include “Bar Code Reading System for Reconstructing Irregularly Damaged Bar Codes”; “Method and Apparatus for Enhancing Resolution of Reflectance Signals Produced From Machine Readable Symbols”; and “Systems, Methods and Devices that Dynamically Establish a Sensor Network.”

He has also been published in journals such as Leningrad, Transactions of MMAEA, and Rocket-Space Technique. Maltseff’s work has also been featured in textbooks like DSS for FMS design, Petri Nets with Uncertainties and Theoretical Fundamentals of Design, and Identification of Complex Systems

Maltseff earned a PhD and DSc in applied cybernetics from MMAEA. He was also a professor there and a head of the laboratory at the National Academy of Sciences of USSR before he came to the United States in the early 1990s.

Despite the accolades that Maltseff earned in Russia, he made it his mission to keep up his pursuit of perfection when he got to the United States and found it more important than ever in his new country.

“Everything had to be perfect because we have different cultures and a different approach to life,” he says. “Even though you might not be perfect, you should try to do your best. This is what I learned in Russia and what I’ve been trying to do in the United States for the last twenty-five years.”

When Maltseff immigrated to the United States, his career remained science- and technology-oriented. He worked as a software engineering and neural network scientist for Versatron Corporation, where he developed advanced intelligence algorithms for automatic object recognition and optimal tracking. But it was happenstance that he wound up in the legal space that he’s in today.

As an employee at Intermec Technologies Corp., Maltseff received a request from the legal team to review the technology of a competitor. From that point on, he became intrigued with how lawyers operated. Maltseff was used to scientists’ straightforward, common sense approach. Watching how lawyers processed information intrigued him so much that he decided to go to law school.

“Intellectual property is one of the fundamental components of this universe.”

PAUL MALTSEFF

“I had the opportunity to continuously connect with ingenuity and development,” he says. “I don’t concede that I totally abandoned technology; I am still living in two different worlds and trying to make sense of both.”

Having feet in both worlds pays off for Maltseff as he tries to excel in his role, which happens to be in a complex line of business. Data collection is an expensive and time-consuming exercise, not to mention the fact that every client who works with Datalogic needs and expects 100 percent accuracy. The last thing a company like Datalogic wants is to mix up something as simple as a ZIP code, which could lead to confusion between Florida and California, or reading a bar code for toothpaste that gets rung up as a steak.

Avoiding missteps like that goes back to the chase for perfection that Maltseff often references. In order to get to that level, it takes a strong team. “When you continuously work on the improvement and the perfection of the team, everyone has a talent. We need to explore that talent,” he says. “What are people’s strong suits? Who is doing the best at what they do?”

Although the job is complex and the stakes are high for every one of Datalogic’s clients, Maltseff wouldn’t trade his position for anything. He’s grateful Datalogic found him and vice versa. “What makes Datalogic work is creativity and innovation,” he says. “We aren’t big; our closest competitors are eight or nine times bigger than we are. The only way to compete is to be innovative and smart. As a scientist and patent attorney, I really enjoy working with talented engineers.”

SEED IP LAW GROUP LLP IS A LEADING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW FIRM BASED IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, CONSISTING OF OVER FIFTY PATENT ATTORNEYS AND PATENT AGENTS. SEED IP’S CLIENTS RANGE IN SIZE FROM INDIVIDUALS AND START-UP COMPANIES TO ESTABLISHED MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS, AND HAVE IP NEEDS RANGING FROM TRADEMARK CLEARANCE TO THE PROTECTION OF COMPLEX ELECTRICAL, CHEMICAL, AND BIOTECHNOLOGY PATENTS.

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How Storage Units Can Change Lives

Roger Clark leads Public Storage’s recruitment efforts and weathers two storms in the process

By DAVID BAEZ

Roger Clark, regional vice president for Public Storage in North Houston, will always remember Memorial Day 2015. That’s when a major flood turned many of the city’s streets into canals, leaving residents to row in canoes to pick up stranded neighbors. Rainfall came relentlessly at four inches per hour. Houston emergency responders carried out more than 500 water rescues.

Public Storage was tasked with accommodating thousands of people whose homes had flooded. Employees flew in from other regions to support the customer traffic. Working furiously, they inventoried their product daily and sent out a constant stream of communications. What Clark remembers most about those days is the incredible amount of emotion and the helping spirit that prevailed.

“It was stressful, not because of the volume of demand, but because of the amount of emotion,” he says. “Every day, my property managers were hugging crying customers, often crying with them. My entire

team worked early every morning and late every evening, seven days a week. It was hard, but it was also rewarding to know that the help we were providing was mission critical and meaningful.”

One year later, it happened again. This time the company was prepared. It had people lined up before the storm hit as just-in-case responders. Executives held conference calls assessing worst-case scenarios, necessary action steps, and prestorm and poststorm punch lists. They also knew to plan for property and community inspections right after the rain stopped. Employees handed out instructions on contacting FEMA.

“We were able to give more than a comforting shoulder this time,” Clark says. “We were able to give confident instruction. It was a dramatic reminder of how important it is to really connect with people.

Clark says that he is grateful for the experience because it brought him back to the true purpose of his work.

Roger Clark Regional VP Public Storage Houston, TX

Roger Clark joined Public Storage in 2009 as a district manager. Christin

“The real purpose of my company and the product we offer is to provide the physical means for people to maintain emotional attachments,” he says. “The things in these storage units are not just couches and dressers and bunk beds. ‘This is grandma’s couch, and we miss her. This is my mom’s photo album with baby pictures going back generations.’ These units hold mementos of people’s life experience and are a staging area for their future plans.”

Hearing him speak, it’s clear that Clark “bleeds orange,” the phrase the company uses to indicate commitment and loyalty to the mission, and the color of their logo and their iconic storage unit doors. However, when he was first recruited, Clark says his dream was not exactly to rent storage units as a career. He went through the process with a healthy dose of skepticism. After visiting a property with the district manager, he realized the job was really about coaching sales performance and customer service in an industry that was not sexy on the surface but highly emotional.

“These are things I’m really passionate about,” he says. “I am passionate about driving human performance. That’s when I knew this was a place I could thrive.”

His passionate embrace of the company culture makes him the perfect person to lead the company’s hiring efforts. In fact, he has pioneered the leadership recruiting program. Without the flash of trendy companies with celebrity endorsements, it can be a hard sell, but Clark keeps that in mind when proactively positioning Public Storage in the job market.

“We are no longer interested in hiring the best person that happens to apply,” he says. “We want to get the best people in the world.”

To do that, Clark has led an effort to make the company and the caliber of its employees more transparent. He began advertising the

HOW ROGER CLARK STAYS FOCUSED

Roger Clark worked as a district manager with Mattress Firm and Vitamin World before joining Public Storage in 2009. He has moved up in the company from district manager to his current role as regional vice president. Along the way, he has cherished his roles as mentor and recruiter.

To achieve all that, Clark maintains his optimism and focus by committing to two activities daily. First, he reads and reflects on a topic that helps him keep his personal values at the front of his mind. The second is exercise. He and his family go to the YMCA together four or five times a week, where he lifts weights and plays basketball.

“Exercise strengthens all aspects,” he says. “It improves dexterity, endurance, strength, and focus. These benefits are realized not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Physical activity is important to maintain a healthy heart, and I mean that figuratively as well as literally.”

job opportunities online using the company’s best people. Now, job seekers can search Public Storage on LinkedIn and see the work experience, accomplishments, and promotion time lines of leaders across the company.

“This allows the most talented people in the country to see what we are all about, who works here, and what kind of opportunity is available in an industry that most people don’t think about while they have their coffee,” he says. “We always had the brand awareness, but now we have the career opportunity awareness, too.”

The company has also changed its interview process. It doesn’t hire on a probationary basis. If someone is hired, it means three levels of executives have signed off on that person and believe he or she will make the company better.

“That collective agreement means that when that person struggles, they still have our confidence,” he says. “We all saw something valuable in this person, so we will back them up, dust them off, and support them. Getting hired at Public Storage is hard. It should be.”

If there are a lot of applicants eager to bleed orange these days, that’s in no small part due to Clark’s passion and efforts.

Putting the Pieces Together

Systemax general counsel Eric Lerner explains why the legal function is really a critical business function

BY DAVID LEVINE

When Profile last spoke with Eric Lerner in 2013, the senior vice president and general counsel for Systemax Inc. discussed his role as in-house counsel after a successful thirty-year career in private corporate law. “For most of my career, I was a nuts-and-bolts corporate, M&A, and securities business lawyer, and though it was not part of any plan, it turned out I had the perfect training to work for a public operating company like Systemax,” he says.

In the past few years, Lerner’s role has expanded to include oversight of all securities, corporate, corporate governance, intellectual property, risk management, insurance, and safety compliance matters across the company, in addition to general oversight of the entire legal team, including human resources and litigation matters. He has also helped lead the company through several acquisitions and sales transactions over the past few years, including large deals in the United States and Europe.

In the process, Lerner has helped transform and deeply integrate the legal team into the business of Systemax, a Fortune 1000 company and leading retailer of brand-name and private-label products, including industrial supplies in the United States and Canada, and computer equipment, related accessories, and technology services and solutions in Europe. With $1.7 billion in sales, the company employs about 3,500 people and serves customers through a system of branded e-commerce websites and relationship marketers. “The key has been using the legal function to drive process improvements in the business and to have emerging business needs shape the legal function,” he says. “If legal can generate cost efficiencies, reduce risk, mitigate liability, and help automate business processes, it’s a win-win for legal and the business.”

Whether it is a new acquisition or a new market the company is entering, Lerner tries to get the legal team involved with the business decisions from an early stage to lend as much help as possible, to troubleshoot, and to get ahead of issues that might arise—legal or otherwise.

“It’s always been my view that there is no such thing as a ‘legal issue.’ The resolution of most legal issues is that eventually somebody has to write somebody else a check or the company needs to incur compliance costs or deal with a proceeding,” he says. “Just about every legal issue is really a business issue or economic issue in waiting. Its legal’s job to get in front of those and prevent them from happening or to mitigate their effect on the business in the first place.”

The company’s entire risk management function—including worker’s compensation matters, all forms of insurance, facility safety, OSHA compliance, and product safety—falls under his supervision. On top of that, Lerner works hands-on with the human resources teams in the United States and Europe, often regarding monitoring the employee termination protocol he initiated a few years ago. In the past, a manager could simply fire someone, and legal and HR would need to scramble to catch up. “Now, there is a tight protocol for documenting and elevating the decision, and approval from legal is required for any employee termination,” he says. “By having all terminations run through legal, we can make sure that we have proper documentation in place, that people have received adequate warnings, that they are not in a protected antidiscrimination class requiring special attention, and that good process has been followed.”

This change in business processes, driven by legal, has drastically reduced wrongful termination claims of all kinds. “I won’t veto a termination that is otherwise appropriate,” Lerner says. “My job is just to make sure there is no unnecessary risk and that we’ve done our homework.”

The risk management team has also implemented several new safety training and awareness initiatives. These initiatives have not only helped to boost morale and decrease injuries on the operations side, but they have also saved the company money through reduced frequency of incidents, lower medical costs, and fewer absences due to injury. Much of this success stems from emphasizing safety in everyday operations, tracking incidents to identify trends and take early corrective action, and creating an enhanced safety culture that starts with employee engagement.

“With operations in several major facilities here and in Europe, we make our local safety committees more active and aggressive,” he says. “We’re implementing enhanced reporting processes so any safety situations are quickly elevated for remediation. We use early trend analysis, so if we see similar fact patterns or injuries, we can focus on a root cause that needs addressing.”

When a new product is onboarding, risk management gets involved with the product group to see if special labeling, shipping, or storage requirements are needed, he explains. “We’ve also worked with the product management, customer service, and IT teams in the United States and Europe to implement automated reporting of product safety incidents, so we can get our engineers, legal, and safety review functions in gear immediately upon the report of an incident,” Lerner adds.

These initiatives have been a stunning success in enhancing the safety environment and reducing costs. “The first and most

“Legal touches everything. Sometimes, we are the only people in position to see all the pieces of the puzzle.”

ERIC LERNER

Leadership

Leadership is a virtue

.

Kramer Levin joins Profile magazine in recognizing Eric M. Lerner for his leadership as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Systemax Inc. and congratulates the whole Systemax team for their many accomplishments.

info@kramerlevin.com www.kramerlevin.com

important thing is keeping people safe, of course,” Lerner says. “You have to sell an awful lot of product to cover the financial cost to a business of workplace injuries. All these things we have done, plus empowering employees to police themselves, may sound trite, but making safety part of the culture and getting people to think about it in their everyday interactions makes a difference.”

His legal team helps the business side launch new product initiatives, as well. In the United States, for example, Systemax is growing its lighting business. “We already sell lighting equipment, and we want to expand to installation and project management,” he says. “Legal is with them, shoulder-to-shoulder, to properly structure that in terms of liability, customer relations, and other concerns.”

In the United Kingdom, Systemax has launched a new networking services and solutions business to complement its historical hardware and software businesses. “Our purchase and sales documentation as a product-oriented business didn’t line up with a service business,” Lerner explains. “Legal worked with the leaders of the new business to set up a separate approval process and different contractual arrangements to more speedily move their transactions through to closure. It was a great example of the business and legal working together from inception to craft a new business model.”

From new product launches, new business units, and enhancing process management to operations and product safety, Lerner’s role at the company crosses almost all departments. “Legal touches everything,” he says. “Sometimes, we are the only people in position to see all the pieces of the puzzle and how to make them best fit.”

KRAMER LEVIN CONGRATULATES OUR FORMER PARTNER AND COLLEAGUE ERIC LERNER ON HIS SUCCESS IN TRANSFORMING THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT AT SYSTEMAX INTO A STRONG AND EFFECTIVE TEAM AND HIS ROLE IN SYSTEMAX’S LEADERSHIP IN PROVIDING COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA.

Law and Leadership

Neiman Marcus’s Tracy Preston explains the value of mentorship, community, and family

BY REBECCA MAY

As senior vice president and general counsel for Neiman Marcus, Tracy Preston knows that mentorship is the key ingredient to effective leadership. Mentoring cultivates talent, creates a growth culture, and increases everyone’s outcomes. Profile spoke with Preston about how her family, high school teachers, and college experiences cultivated her life-long calling to contribute in the legal profession—from her first grade teacher to her mentor in AP English, from competitive athletic opportunities to watching reruns of Perry Mason. Preston discusses how these diverse experiences influenced her interest in the law and legal affairs and helped her get to where she currently contributes her skills to the Neiman Marcus Group (NMG) luxury brands.

WHEN DID YOU DECIDE THAT YOU WANTED TO PURSUE A CAREER IN LAW?

From my earliest memories, I have always been interested in the legal profession. During my summer visits with my paternal grandparents, this interest grew. They loved Perry Mason and were also passionate about voting rights. As you can imagine, for them, at that time and living in the South, voting and civil rights were a very important issue that they took great care to share with me. This nurtured my interest in diversity and pro bono work around civil rights. Before college, I had also enjoyed competitive sports; the challenge, competition, and learning curve also helped inspire my interest in a career that provides that level of intensity. As I grew older and understood more about the law, I was fascinated by the powerful impact that the law could make in so many areas. I went on to attend Georgetown University to study government/international relations. I enjoyed living in the diversity of the District and the opportunities that this afforded people from all different backgrounds. It was here that I interned at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and decided I wanted to pursue my law degree and a lifelong career. My maternal grandfather’s career was

TRACY PRESTON SVP, GENERAL COUNSEL

NEIMAN MARCUS

DALLAS, TX

also influential. He was one of the first African American stenotype reporters employed in the New York City courts.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE EARLY STAGES OF YOUR CAREER?

After Georgetown, I immediately applied to go to law school. I went to the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. Afterward, I moved to California, and my entire legal career, prior to coming to Neiman Marcus, was in the San Francisco Bay area. I worked in the ERISA group at Baker McKenzie. I did pro bono work in various areas of law, such as landlord-tenant and employment, and also provided legal services to the homeless through one of the bar association’s programs. I expanded into employment, commercial, product liability, and intellectual property at my next firm. Looking for more of an expansive practice, the next firm provided me with the opportunity to further develop my skills, broaden my contribution, and set longer-term career goals of moving in-house and possibly a chief or general counsel role.

At Latham & Watkins, I met my first legal mentor. Her name was Barbara Caulfield. She just stepped down from the Northern California District Court bench and, having moved back to private practice, was looking for “lieutenants,” as I would call it, to be a part of her legal team and to assist her with her caseload. It was an incredible opportunity, very challenging, and exposed me to new areas of law. Working with her and other partners at the firm was like being a junior partner while being an associate lawyer. I followed Barbara to another firm, Orrick, and that’s where I became partner in the litigation group in San Francisco. While at Orrick, I was very involved in the various mentoring programs, including running the diversity program and the summer associate program for several years. After about five years, I had an opportunity to go in-house and took my initial position of association general counsel at Levi Strauss & Co.

Jackson Lewis is honored to partner with

TRACY PRESTON

and congratulates her for being recognized by Profile Magazine as one of the nation’s top general counsels.

With 800 attorneys in major locations throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Jackson Lewis provides the resources to address every aspect of the employer-employee relationship.

Talley R. Parker

Jackson Lewis P.C.

500 N. Akard • Suite 2500 Dallas, TX 75201 214-520-2400

Talley.Parker@jacksonlewis.com

WHAT LED YOU TO GO IN-HOUSE?

I am always looking for things to broaden and expand my skill set, and one thing I wanted—after having a national practice—was to be on the inside and to get to know one company fully. I actually heard about the position from friends at the Gap. I was there for eleven years and held various positions—chief counsel for HR, litigation and global supply chain, and chief compliance officer—and got to work on amazing projects, both domestic and international, and to travel across the globe.

ELEVEN YEARS IS A LONG TIME. WHAT WAS IT ABOUT LEVI STRAUSS & CO. THAT YOU LOVED SO MUCH?

Levi Strauss & Co. is a wonderful, family-owned company, and I even had the opportunity to work with some of the family members on various projects. I had great colleagues, great working atmosphere, and a collaborative environment. They were supportive of my career and development while there. Then I had the opportunity to come here [NMG], and I’ve been here since February 2013.

WHAT GOALS OR INITIATIVES DID YOU HAVE FOR NEIMAN MARCUS WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED?

NMG required me to hit the ground running. I dove into major projects while learning my team, my colleagues, the company, running a dual track process [an initial public offering and sale], divestiture of our Chinese business, and managing through a cyberincident. I may have had slower onboarding plans, but these events and projects threw me and my team into the fire. The benefit of such intensity at the outset is that it requires all to bring their best game and use all their skills. Additionally, it shines a light on the areas that need attention. There isn’t time to really learn a lot of nuances, which can cut through the honeymoon period and quickly develop necessary relationships to get the job done. As a litigator, I liked working in that paradigm. It pushed me.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE SPECIFIC CHALLENGES THAT YOU DEAL WITH IN WORKING FOR A LUXURY DEPARTMENT STORE?

Solving problems like how you maintain a luxury experience while online and how you navigate the emerging challenges of cybersecurity. It’s interesting because we are wondering how to find innovative ways to sell. How does our customer want to shop and how do we continue to provide a unique buying experience? I think retail is going through an exciting transformation because of the online retail marketplace and social media platforms. Beyond the purchase, how can we help customers expand their experience with some of the social media platforms, opportunities to connect with others, share their purchase, and enjoy the memories they create with the items they have purchased from any of our NMG brands, like Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, mytheresa.com, and Last Call? And, as retailers, how do we deal with that and adapt and transform to how our customer shops today?

“Diverse teams expand perception, understanding, problem solving, and customer relationships. This will help you expand not only your employee base, but your customer base, too.”

TRACY PRESTON

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS?

In addition to the things I mentioned earlier that I faced when I first joined the company, I think I’d add to that the company’s acquisition of mytheresa.com. A rewarding accomplishment while working at Levi Strauss & Co. was when my team and I developed an expanded anticorruption audit process. Also, I was heavily involved with the mentoring and diversity programs at the firms where I worked.

WHY IS DIVERSITY SO IMPERATIVE?

It’s important because diversity brings a broad scope of perspectives, and those diverse perspectives are vital to delivering extraordinary outcomes. Diversity also provides a unique competitive edge to a company. Diverse teams expand perception, understanding, problem solving, and customer relationships. This will help you expand not only your employee base, but your customer base, too.

WHAT QUALITIES MAKE A STRONG LEADER?

I would start with values: this is your compass. Then vision: I think of this as your map, charting the course. [Next is] curiosity because that helps you navigate the unexpected. In the state of curiosity, you aren’t in a reactionary mode, which increases one’s ability to successfully respond to variables and find new solutions. Curiosity also creates a cultural mind-set of inquiry, good listening, and connection, which builds trust and improves all sorts of outcomes, both people- and product-centric. Then there’s transparency. This breeds a culture of responsibility and feedback. Transparency encourages contribution, collaboration, appreciation, and visibility for the efforts made. Finally, there’s failure. There is a strong cultural narrative to be afraid of failure, but I think failure provides the feedback you need to recalibrate and achieve excellence. In many ways, one’s mastery of a subject or discipline comes from the feedback of failure.

WHY DO YOU EMPHASIZE MENTORSHIP?

It is vital to mastering one’s gifts, deepening skill, and broadening one’s vision or goals. Having a mentor helps you create a growth culture that allows people to realize their goals and grow those to a broader vision. Mentoring helps you strengthen your team’s skill, develop new areas, and improve outcomes. Mentoring creates a growth culture, which often brings forth new levels of talent. It grows both parties in meaningful ways, and it is a joy to celebrate accomplishments.

WHY IS GOOD LEADERSHIP NECESSARY FOR A GENERAL COUNSEL?

The general counsel is a resource to help achieve the goals of the company. Essentially, the general counsel is helping the different departments and teams have a clear ability to achieve the objectives with which they are tasked. He or she needs a broad legal understanding from every vantage point. In the end, the general counsel is in charge of looking out for the company’s interest and proactively providing the legal coordinates to deliver on the company’s mission, minimizing risk and liability. I think leadership is essential in this role, as it requires you to interface with all divisions of the company—both internally and externally—which requires leadership skills to build a solid working relationship through trust and great work.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUNGER LAWYERS?

Relationships, relationships, relationships. Build good networks, and get a mentor that has achieved the position or skill you are interested in achieving. Be able to have a sense of humor and have humility. Create a good work/life balance, and appreciate that it is often a bit of a “focused imbalance.” That is, sometimes the case or workload will require a focus and time intensity that has a cycle driven by the case or immediate issues. Balance these periods with good self-care by doing things that you find rejuvenating. Celebrate your wins with family and friends, too.

Gone are the days of whiteboards and overhead projectors. In their place, IT leaders are equipping educators across the country with state-of-the-art technology, encouraging students to utilize their smartphones, and pioneering platforms to connect parents, students, and teachers like never before to usher in a new wave of digital learning.

The

Learning Curve

BY DAVID BAEZ

From a wireless network with hundreds of locations to a “bring your own device” initiative, Maribeth Luftglass is helping to usher in a new education curriculum aligned with technology

For those who came of age in the 1980s, technology at school was pretty much taken care of by students in the AV club. The old stereotype is exemplified by someone pushing a cart with a slide carousel and a projector down the hallways. The student gets everything set up for the teacher, and comes back to fiddle with the equipment if it sputters. What a difference time can make.

Although technology in all of its iterations has always been used as an educational tool, it’s now so integrated in the daily curriculum that school districts have senior-level IT executives. At Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the largest public school system in Virginia, chief information officer Maribeth Luftglass oversees the acquisition and strategic implementation of technology for a system that encompasses about 30,000 employees and roughly 187,000 students.

The child of a high school teacher and a college president, Luftglass showed an early aptitude for math and science. She went on to receive her bachelor’s degree in math and economics at the College of William and Mary before earning her master’s degree in applied science at George Washington University. Looking for a way to use her abilities to help others, she joined the American Red Cross as senior director of IT and spent fifteen years helping coordinate disaster relief efforts around the world. One of her major accomplishments with the agency was to create its first online donation system.

She loved the work, but once she had children, the constant travel that was required became less than ideal. Luftglass wanted something that would keep her near home, but also wanted to remain involved in the nonprofit sector. In 1999, the opportunity with FCPS presented itself, and she returned to her roots in education, which she calls the family business.

“Growing up, I was taught to give back to others,” Luftglass says. “I wanted to find a way to use my skills and talents to do that. The Red Cross was a wonderful opportunity to make a difference, but I had also always been interested in the world of education, and being part of a school system fit perfectly.”

As CIO, Luftglass works in two spheres: at the enterprise level and in the schools themselves. FCPS is a school system, but it is structured in a similar fashion to a Fortune 500 company, with payroll, transportation, libraries, and student information to manage. Then, there’s also the tech in the schools: computers, iPads, education software, and apps, to name a few. FCPS has about two hundred thousand computers and a wireless network with roughly two hundred locations and

Fairfax County Public Schools Falls Church, VA

CIO

eight thousand access points. Toss in about two hundred thousand parents and the larger community that interacts with the schools, and Luftglass is now responsible for four hundred thousand users. She has about four hundred staff under her, managing everything from network administration to the safety of student data. And everything has to work seamlessly together.

Luftglass is also the technology liaison with the school board and the superintendent, and she remains close with day-to-day work of the schools. Every week, she’s in schools talking to principals and teachers to get feedback on their priorities for technology. She and her staff mentor students individually, as well as grade science fairs and participate in other student activities.

“I want to make sure we never lose the human element,” she says.

Managing such a large enterprise, it’s helpful to have, as Luftglass does, crystal clear objectives to keep herself and her staff on task. “I want my students and teachers to have access to the information and the systems they need to do their jobs,” she says. “It’s the system’s job to educate and the students’ job to learn, so I want to make sure they don’t have to worry whether computer systems are running properly. I’m also aligning myself with the strategic plan of the school system and ensuring there isn’t a digital gap. Kids in poverty need to have the same access to the Internet and technology. I don’t want technology to be a reason they can’t get their work done.”

Luftglass and her team continue to expand the way technology is used in the schools. FCPS was one of the first districts in the country to launch a bring your own device (BYOD) program. Luftglass says the initiative is bringing devices from under the desk and

into clear view, meaning it allows students to use their cell phones, tablets, and laptops, and makes sure they are connected. The program trains teachers on how to integrate the devices into their curriculum. About eighty thousand students currently participate.

One of the greatest accomplishments of technology in education today, Luftglass says, is the adaptive learning made possible through online applications. In reading programs, online books will increase in difficulty at the pace the student is learning. As a result, if there is a class of third graders with disparate reading levels, they can all continue learning without the teacher having to slow the class down at the expense of the higher-level readers or speed things up at the expense of the students who are learning slower than others.

Looking ahead, Luftglass sees cloudbased applications and the Internet of Things impacting education. FCPS already has one online campus and plans to open more. The school system is also looking to build more business partnerships that will allow students to do internships and connect with international experts when working on projects. It’s hard to predict specifically what, but there will be more technology initiatives coming down the pipeline, which is something that Luftglass finds more than exciting.

“We can’t really imagine what it’s going to be like,” she says. “That’s the fun thing about technology.”

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Maribeth Luftglass and Fairfax County Public Schools are using innovative technology to help students learn at their own pace, while also stressing the human element.

How one tech leader is using skills honed at NASA to change the face of K-12 education in one of the nation’s largest school districts

Education is light years away from what it once was. Nowadays, implementing a technology plan to deliver education is a galactically important and challenging job. In a district like Cypress-Fairbanks, it’s an especially arduous task. The independent school district has 114,704 students and eighty-eight schools, making it the third largest school district in Texas and the twenty-third largest in the nation. As chief technology officer, Frankie Jackson develops and executes the tech strategies designed to give the students more opportunity while making teachers’ jobs better. Jackson has big goals for the big district. She’s asked her team to provide 24/7 access to digital teaching and learning through blended and virtual models that enhance and personalize the student experience. To do so, Jackson not only relies on the lessons she’s learned over two decades in K-12 education, but she also draws from her experience supporting space shuttle and station operations at NASA.

Before moving into the public education sector by accepting a CTO role with Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District in 1994, Jackson spent ten years in software engineering at NASA, where she supported operations at the Johnson Space Center. As Jackson rose through the ranks over a decade in mission operations, she gained valuable training and experience not only in technical areas, but also in the renowned Malcolm Baldrige framework of quality and excellence.

Frankie Jackson

BY ZACH BALIVA

In 1987—a year after the Challenger tragedy—the Reagan administration developed the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to stimulate the nation’s economy. Top organizations in many sectors, including healthcare, space, and defense, use the standards to drive organizational performance by focusing on fact-based knowledge, performance improvement, quality, measured results, and feedback. In 1993, Jackson worked on a project on a team of seven that became a finalist for the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which recognizes performance excellence. Her specialty in the application was on the leadership category.

CTO

Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District

Houston, TX

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Layer 3 Communications’ core value to our clients is in our technical expertise and professionalism. Our technical services team outnumbers our sales and operations personnel by a ratio of 4:1. We maintain the top level of certifications with our manufacturer partners, and in many cases provide technical support to our clients on their behalf.

“I approach public education using the mind-set that I left NASA with.”

FRANKIE JACKSON

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Norcross, GA* Birmingham, AL Columbia, SC Nashville, TN Savannah, GA Austin, TX San Antonio, TX

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By the end of 1993, Jackson was a program manager for NASA’s top quality and safety areas. The next year, while working for Unisys as part of the space transportation shuttle operations contract, Jackson led the company to win the George M. Low Award for Quality and Excellence.

Although she found the work to be rewarding, Jackson wanted to find more time for her growing family. That desire led her to accept her first position in public education and put her on a new path—one where she uses the technical skills and quality management principles learned at NASA to bring a different style of leadership and a different level of results.

Jackson joined Cypress-Fairbanks in 2013, and she now works alongside nationally respected leaders, such as superintendent Dr. Mark Henry, who has turned the district into one of the nation’s top academic and financial performers. In May of 2014, Cypress-Fairbanks district voters approved a $1.2 billion bond referendum for safety and security improvements, new construction, renovations, and transportation. The referendum also included $217 million for upgrades to classroom technology and district infrastructure. Following the vote, Jackson began implementing a 2020 plan to install ubiquitous high-speed wireless access,

INSPIRATION FOR SUCCESS

Other than the romance associated with working in the space program— she kept the flight crew patch and other mementos from each shuttle launch—Frankie Jackson remembers the team approach she saw in action at the Johnson Space Center. Every month, team members gathered to discuss projects and results. During the month, they posted pictures and stories on a small, shared bulletin board. Communicating results over time inspired those in the space program to strive for continued excellence. The practice, started in the 1980s, was a precursor for the websites and digital platforms Jackson now uses to inspire and motivate her teams at Texas’s Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District.

to expand Internet availability, and to implement other measures that will change how students engage through blended and personalized learning.

As she rolls out the plan, Jackson is employing the Baldrige principles. In fact, she was first hired in part for this experience and leadership philosophy. “When I joined public education, the hiring manager reminded me not to change anything about myself,” Jackson says. “I approach public education using the mind-set that I left NASA with.”

Although professionals in other industries have accepted the Baldrige criteria, they were relatively new in education. Jackson has taught the methods to her peers and counterparts in public schools. The methodology is based on communication, strategic planning, customer needs, measurement, and analysis, and it has yielded dramatic results in education. Jackson is confident that it will help her drive her 2020 technology plan at Cypress-Fairbanks. When she left NASA in 1993, she was using the steps to support mission critical operations on space stations and space shuttles. Now, her team uses the same approach to support mission critical systems like student attendance, student safety, and grade reporting.

The entire framework is now embedded in all department projects and activities. If Jackson’s team receives a complaint about a repair request response time, they simply mine data gathered from previous years, compare the results, and respond or adjust accordingly. “Speaking from quantifiable results brings instant credibility,” Jackson says. “It would be nearly impossible to manage a district of this size without good data.” By taking this approach and faithfully executing it on all tasks, her department has a significant impact on the large system. Jackson also uses the Consortium of School Network’s Certified Education Technology Leader (CETL) framework to help her envision and successfully build twenty-first-century learning environments. As a CETL, Jackson collaborates and

benchmarks with CTOs across the nation to help support her leadership.

Jackson works hard to make sure her staff is up to the challenge. “You can have all the money in the world, but when it comes down to implementation and quality, you have to have a great staff that buys into your vision,” she says. Leadership must set the expectations and communicate the plan. Everyone must feel like they’re accomplishing work that matters. Jackson says her biggest rewards come when a student’s eyes light up using Google Chrome, or when a child gets inspired by something they otherwise wouldn’t see on a field trip though Google Expeditions, which her team enabled in 2016. “I have to constantly remind my staff about what we’re doing to change the educational experience,” Jackson says. “It’s not wires and circuits; it’s systems that inspire students and prepare the next generation of leaders.”

She gets that message out through a robust district website unlike anything most educators have ever seen. There, employees, students, educators, and the public can find stories, photos, and videos that illustrate Jackson’s point. Each department has its own page, and leaders and staff members upload materials that showcase their activities. Teachers might snap a few pictures of their class working on tablets, or administrators might upload a video of tech pros providing cameras on buses. When tech professionals log on, they can see students interacting with what they built. Jackson calls it a priceless motivator and adds that her team is always motivated and excited when they can see their contribution come to life in the field.

To date, Jackson’s team has spent $60 million on Cypress-Fairbanks’ technology infrastructure network and has $30 million left to go. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In 2017, IT will continue installing devices and components that will bring about Jackson’s vision for 24/7, blended learning as she and her team break down the walls and provide better educational opportunities through technology.

BY MICHAEL HERNANDEZ

Finding the solution to Baltimore County’s schools within the schoolhouse

With about 112,000 students, Baltimore County Public Schools decided in 2013 that it needed to tackle hard realities facing its students. They needed more equitable distribution of resources, technology, teachers, and facilities. In short, they needed more equitable access to opportunity. That requires a force of supportive educators, which in turn requires equally supportive administration. This is where Dr. John Mayo comes in. As chief human resources officer, Mayo makes sure that his students have the right teachers, and he ensures that those teachers can perform to the best of their abilities. He thinks of himself as someone who’s trying to help others get where they want to be. He keeps a poem from his elementary days, Langston Hughes’s “Dreams,” in his mind often. The piece urges readers to “hold fast to your dreams.”

It’s an appropriate poem for someone in education, but the message also touches the story of Mayo’s career in an unexpected way. His dream from the age of five was to be a cardiac surgeon. Having grown up watching his father struggle with heart problems, he was determined to help, and he followed that dream all the way through an undergraduate degree in biology. However, while he was studying for the MCAT, Mayo started substitute teaching at his old school, and his plans—and his dream—changed.

“I fell in love with teaching while I was there, and I never really looked back,” he says. “I fell in love with working with kids, even mentoring kids who are now medical doctors. I was able to give them some real-life perspective in those units rather than simply moving on to the next chapter—discussing what it was like in the field.”

He followed that new passion and eventually became a science teacher, department chair, assistant principal, and, later, principal. After his first year of full-time teaching, Mayo was offered the opportunity to lead the science department as they entered the process of state accreditation. It was an exciting opportunity for a young teacher, but it also put him in the rare position of leading the very teachers who had mentored him in science in the first place.

“I told them upfront: I’m not an expert,” Mayo recalls. “I told them, ‘You all believed in me when I was a student, and now we need to work together for other students in the same situation.’”

At the end of that year, the science department was the first department in the school to be accredited, and Mayo discovered after leading this team that his calling was not just to help students, but also to help adults.

Today, Mayo handles recruitment, union negotiations, evaluations, employee dispute resolutions, benefits, leaves, retirements, and risk

Dr. John Mayo CHRO

Baltimore County Public Schools Towson, MD

“We were at 90 percent of our kids passing state tests, but that meant there were 10 percent who were still struggling. People said ‘We’re already doing great things.’ I needed to explain to them why we needed to do more.”

DR. JOHN MAYO

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management for Baltimore County Public Schools. Before he came into his role as chief human resources officer in 2014, the hiring for a school year had sometimes continued late into the summer. Today, he keeps staffing at the forefront. In fact, one of his first actions was to implement a new applicant tracking system. This kind of improvement, though a huge undertaking, makes sure that the county’s students have the best teachers possible.

“Someone’s not going to wait until June, July, or August,” Mayo explains. “They’ll go somewhere else.”

Mayo has focused on streamlining this process in his new role. Just last school year, he brought more than seven hundred teachers into his school system. Today he recruits year-round, staying in contact with local colleges and even going as far as Puerto Rico to find Spanish-speaking teachers for his students. Puerto Rico might not seem like the first place to look for teachers for Baltimore schools, but educating students to have international communications skills is a major part of the school system’s strategic plan, Blueprint 2.0.

As someone who knows from experience that the solutions to a school’s biggest issues can come from within the school itself,

Mayo has even worked to establish a pipeline within the student body for high schoolers who have the potential to be great teachers. He sees the potential in people like himself whose career plans might have brought them to teaching indirectly.

“I’m a firm believer in working with them,” he insists. “Maybe education was their plan B, so now we can work to get that person where they need to be.”

Although his school system has made major progress, Mayo is unlikely to rest on his laurels. Even when he led a high-performing school, he still urged his staff to do better.

“We still had a long way to go,” he says. “We were at 90 percent of our kids passing state tests, but that meant there were 10 percent who were still struggling. People said, ‘We’re already doing great things. Why are you trying to change things?’ I explained to them that we needed to do more.”

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The days of banning electronics in the classroom are gone, and thanks to leaders such as Jim Culbert, every student, teacher, and administrator can receive the benefits of technology

It may have been nineteen years ago when Jim Culbert began his path in the technology industry, but he never had to venture too far. He began working in Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Florida, as a field technician, troubleshooting software and hardware issues in schools all over the county. Today, as the chief information officer, Culbert is in the same place, but his journey has been busy, to say the least.

In between his work in the field and his executive role today, he has successfully transformed the district schools’ technology capabilities, putting Duval on the cutting edge of IT and changing the way students learn and teachers teach.

“I didn’t have a degree in IT, but I gained computer knowledge and experience while I was in the navy, and later, while working for the federal government,” Culbert says. “I went to work for the school system because I wanted a change of pace and because the federal government was going through downsizing at that time.”

Culbert then slowly moved up through the school system’s IT ranks, working in various positions. “I went back to school and earned a bachelor’s degree in information security online at Western Governors University,” he adds. “After that, I was promoted to security manager for the school district.”

BY LISA TROSHINSKY

In the following years, the arrival of a new superintendent brought in fresh staff members. Culbert applied to become the new CIO, and he was selected to be the new executive director.

CIO

Duval County Public Schools Jacksonville, FL

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All the time he was working up the ladder, though, Culbert had his eye on the executive leadership position and saw his opportunity. “At some point in my career, it became a goal of mine,” he says. “Being the security manager allowed me to leapfrog into the IT director position. In this role, I would have plenty of opportunities to affect change in the school district.”

In a public school district, one of the challenges with IT, Culbert says, is getting students, teachers, and the principals to understand what their core work is all about.

“Before I came in, the CIO did its own thing without input from the end user,” Culbert says. “In this case, the end users are the students, teachers, parents, and administrators. The position pushed programs without taking the time for their input.”

Culbert says the core work of IT should be centered around the classroom. To help ensure this, Culbert utilizes OneView, which he compares to a single pane of glass.

“A single pane of glass allows resources from different sites into one view for users,” he says. “When we developed it, we brought in a Microsoft team who went out and met with users—in this case, middle and high school students, teachers, administrators, and parent groups. We asked them, ‘If you had a portal that could do anything, what would it do?’ We had the parents sign off on their portal, the students sign off on their portal, the administrators sign off on their portal, and the teachers sign off on their portal.”

After logging in, the students’ portal, for example, allows children to access their grades, assignments, calendar, resources, e-mail, documents, bus schedule, lunch menu, and blended learning resources, Culbert says. “Before, students didn’t have online storage of documents,” he says. “Now, each student has a terabyte of space to store documents that they can access from school, home, or their phones.”

Culbert says that teachers also have a single sign-on for all learning applications. For example, they can access a roster for all students and use I-Ready—a blended learning platform that can incorporate chapters from different textbooks and online activities. “This is a different model of teaching and learning,” he says. “When I went to school in the 1980s, we started on page one of the textbook and would read until the end of the textbook. Now, with technology, you can customize students’ learning in one central place.”

The benefits of this new tech is more than evident, particularly when it comes to seeing

a transformation in Duval’s middle schools. “We walk into a classroom and teachers are running different learning centers. Maybe one group of students is doing textbook instruction while another group is working with an interactive monitor, and a third group in the same classroom is doing group individualized instruction with the teacher,” he says. “This is vastly different than the traditional lecture-centered environment in classrooms.”

Culbert believes blending learning with technology is essential. He explains that it is difficult to ask children to power down all electronics, put everything away, and focus entirely on the teacher. “These programs allow the use of technology—interactive touchscreen monitors that any student can plug into,” he says.

Duval County Public Schools are also fortunate to have an average of 1.5 computers for every one student, he says. In middle schools throughout the district, there is one computer for every student; in elementary schools, there are two computers for every student; and in high schools, there are 1.75 computers for every student.

“Computers stay in the schools; they don’t go home with the children,” he says. “Every core classroom—math, English, science, and social studies—has a laptop cart, and there are interactive monitors in all the classrooms.”

Culbert says that over the past three years, the Duval school district implemented high-density wireless so that every classroom in the district can support about fifty wireless devices. “I know we’re at the forefront of IT systems in public schools,” Culbert says. “We’re now getting teachers who have worked with these IT systems at Duval, and while interviewing at other schools, they are asking principals if they have interactive monitors. I have never heard of this before.”

Emtec is proud to support Jim Culbert and Duval County Public Schools in their commitment to outstanding student achievement.

NEC Display Solutions would like to congratulate Jim Culbert and Duval County Schools on their much deserved recognition in Profile magazine. Jim and Duval County schools are determined and committed to providing students with technology that encourages growth and learning. As a leading provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, NEC Display Solutions is proud to be a part of their success.

“Working with Jim Culbert and his team at Duval County Public Schools has produced a rare, collaborative partnership experience. Jim provides vision, while Emtec, along with Jim’s team, implement the plans. The true winners are the students of DCPS as they gain the knowledge needed to achieve success.” -Leslie Owens, VP Infrastructure Division, Emtec

Proudly serving the IT needs of the educational community for over 25 years.

Brett Miller steps up to guide IT public policy in Colorado’s second largest school system

BY PETER FABRIS

Technology executives are not usually known for providing leadership in public policy. For Brett Miller, the chief information officer at Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado, the needs of the district have prompted him to become a catalyst for expanding a regional fiber-optic cooperative for public entities and for crafting data privacy legislation for schools.

The Denver-area county, known locally as Jeffco, is home to Colorado’s second-largest school system, which includes 155 schools, 9 options schools, and 18 charter schools that serve an 800-square-mile area. Miller oversees IT services for all these public schools, which are dispersed across 22 communities and unincorporated areas, and include 84,000 students and 14,000 staff. His biggest current project is upgrading the network backbone by moving broadband services from a local commercial provider to a private educational and research cooperative. Miller’s biggest challenge in this effort is organizational— getting all of the local governments the Jeffco Schools serve to buy into the plan.

The Bi-State Optical Network (BiSON), is a consortium of research and higher education institutions in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains that can provide Jeffco Schools higher bandwidth at a great value. But building out the network is a time-consuming affair, as public safety departments, libraries, and other community entities want to join the network. “We have to put it together piece by piece,” Miller says. It’s a slow process. As of late 2016, only two administrative facilities had been connected to BiSON—after two years of work.

Jeffco Schools initially partnered with University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the Colorado School of Mines to establish connectivity to the BiSON network. “Our next phase involves getting the infrastructure to our schools, and for that we have to work with the city governments,” Miller says. “Fortunately, our partnership with emergency services allows us to engage with multiple cities. Most are enthusiastic and see the value, such as offering wireless hotspots at our schools for law enforcement officers.”

It’s worth the effort because more participants mean that more funding will be available to build out the network. “There is potential to pool funding to save time and to be more efficient,” Miller says. He and other BiSON advocates must educate local city councils, school boards, and other community groups about the network and convince them to dedicate money to it. Miller and his project team have spent many hours attending meetings and on the phone connecting with government officials to drum up support for BiSON connectivity.

More robust Internet connectivity will better support the latest school administration systems and educational software. Teachers are becoming more accustomed to using technology in the classroom, and new apps provide a wider variety of teaching tools. These make it easier, for example, for teachers to tailor programs of study for individual students so that they can learn at their own pace.

However, some new educational software raises data privacy concerns. “In the digital age, vendors can gather personal information on students and market it,” Miller explains. Free apps might require

Brett Miller CIO

Jefferson County Public Schools Golden, CO

Jack Maher

“A lot of it comes down to transparency. Where is the student information? Who has access to it? How is the data used, shared, and deleted?”

BRETT MILLER

Dell and Microsoft K12 Education: Better Learning Outcomes

When students have voice and choice in learning, they become engaged and invested in their educational success. At Dell, we help districts enable student-centered environments, where students, teachers and technology work together to enrich the learning process. Dell’s line of Latitude laptops and Windows 10 give students the tools they need to inquire, create and collaborate and to own their learning.

Dell and Microsoft work closely together to help educators prepare students to enter the future workforce. Dell Professional Learning Consultants help educators integrate technology solutions to enhance teaching practices and learning outcomes. Windows 10 works seamlessly across Dell’s Windows based platforms, runs rich applications, fits with existing management infrastructure and peripherals, and grows with student needs.

users to enter personal information, such as their e-mail address and date of birth, to gain access. That concerns some parents who fear inappropriate marketing to their children will occur, or that personal data could get into the wrong hands and be misused in some way. Jeffco has a significant number of tech-savvy parents who began raising this issue a few years ago, so Miller had to study the problem and create privacy policies for Jeffco Schools.

“A lot of it comes down to transparency,” he says. “Where is the student information? Who has access to it? How is the data used, shared, and deleted?” In order for a software product to be approved for use by the school system, the vendor must be open about these questions and not collect personal data from students for marketing or research, not disclose data or personally identifiable information, and delete any Jeffco data when the contract is terminated with the district. A dedicated portion of the IT staff, which works with the school system’s legal advisors, reviews software agreements to ensure compliance. They compile a list of approved vendors. If a teacher wants to use an app from a unapproved vendor, he or she must request a review and wait for approval.

“It does slow things down and can be frustrating for teachers,” Miller says. But, the school system has decided that safeguarding privacy is a high priority—one that outweighs potential delays in adopting new software.

With Jeffco Schools at the forefront among school systems for creating data privacy policies, Miller has gained considerable expertise on the issue. Applying that knowledge, he was intimately involved in helping to craft state legislation that would provide a starting point for student data privacy.

In June 2016, the Colorado Student Data Transparency Act was signed into law by Governor John Hickenlooper. The law requires school systems around the state to adopt a

formal data privacy policy by December 2017. And, as of August 10, 2016, vendors contracting with schools or educational agencies in Colorado had to contractually agree to comply with certain requirements in order to collect information from students.

Some of the law’s provisions echo healthcare privacy laws. For example, providers must notify educational institutions if a data breach is discovered. In addition, vendors can only share data with subcontractors that comply with the provisions of the law. Also, a data life cycle provision requires the destruction of personal data after a contract ends.

This work on public policy helps to inform Miller’s day-to-day work—as does having children in Jeffco schools. As a concerned parent, he serves on a couple of parent technology advisory committees for individual schools. In that role, he has been involved with many vendor evaluations and negotiations. “Watching a school struggle with issues dealing with vendors gives me a better lens from a county-wide perspective,” Miller says.

A product of Jeffco Schools himself, Miller attended a high school that was one of the few in the county to have a computer lab back when Apple’s first products entered the mass market. After a brief stint in the oil industry, he took a job with Jeffco Schools as a computer tape operator, working on batch runs of administrative applications. He’s been with the school system ever since, rising to chief technology officer ten years ago and chief information officer five years ago.

Few tech leaders have such continuity of service in the same organization, and it gives Miller a deep historic perspective on the evolution of Jeffco Schools’ IT capability. This institutional knowledge is an asset as he guides decisions on new technology investments. It also adds gravitas when he steps into the arena of public policy. As a result, both the state and county benefit in the case of data privacy.

From Start to Finish

By abandoning traditional departments, principal architect Jon Soules has helped his teams reach successful results

By KASEY CHEYDLEUR

JJon Soules knew he wanted to be an architect from an early age. As a child, he loved to draw, and his father, who was a pilot during World War II, helped and encouraged him to design and build model planes. For Soules, there was a certain fascination seeing something come to life off of the page, and that wonder never stopped.

“The joy of working in an architect’s office is to work on a design, do the working drawings, and then go to the site and actually see something you have drawn be built,” Soules says. “Many people think of architects, ‘Oh, they’re not really artists.’ But we are designing your environment, so we really care that it makes people happy, that it’s challenging, and that it’s interesting.”

In fact, that desire to see a project through from beginning to end has shaped the company culture at Diamond Schmitt Architects. Soules serves as one of the firm’s principals

and has led its hiring team for twelve years. The company eschewed traditional departments and created a setup all its own. He describes the office as one full of generalists instead of separate departments focused on a specialty, and each project is seen through from start to finish by the same team.

Soules finds Diamond Schmitt’s de-departmentalized structure more efficient than the traditional setup because it increases awareness and accountability. “In our company, we have people who follow a project from conception to bricks and mortar. They are interested in seeing their team’s design get built and built properly,” he says. “It might sound like not having specialists is not efficient, but we are able to carry something out with a fair degree of confidence because everyone on the team knows the whole picture.”

Soules points to two current projects as proof of Diamond Schmitt’s ongoing

Jon Soules Principal Architect

Diamond Schmitt Architects Toronto, ON

Helen Tansey

Jon Soules, a principal of Diamond Schmitt Architects, and past president of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators has worked with many exceptional clients, colleagues and organizations

• American Society of Architectural Illustrators

• Artscape

• Bird Construction Company

• Bondfield Construction Company Limited

• Boxwood Architects

• Burlington Performing Arts Centre

• City of Burlington

• City of Toronto

• Clearview Institute

• Colliers Project Leaders, Burlington

• The Country Day School, King

• Crossey Engineering Limited

• Daniels Corporation

• Department of Foreign A airs and International Trade

• E. Rahat & Associates

• Entuitive Consulting Engineers

• Fast + Epp Structural Engineers

• Fisher Dachs Associates

• Gillam Group

• Kolker Kolker Epstein Architects

• Manulife Securities Incorporated

• Ruby Lougheed Yawney

• The Mentoring Partnership

• National Arts Centre/ Centre National des Arts

• Parks Canada / Parcs Canada

• PCL Constructors Canada Inc.

• Smith + Andersen Consulting Engineering

• StructureCraft Builders Inc.

• Threshold Acoustics

• Toronto Community Housing Corporation

• Toronto Zoo

• Turner Construction Company (Canada)

• Turner & Townsend / CM2R

• University of Calgary

• University of Toronto

• University of Waterloo

dsai.ca

success and the worth of its methods. The first is the multiyear Regent Park Revitalization Plan, which seeks to transform, without gentrifying, the seventy-seven-acre downtown Toronto neighborhood. Working as the master-plan consultant with codevelopers The Daniels Corporation and Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Diamond Schmitt has been working on the project for nearly ten years.

The project includes mixed-use commercial and residential development, two parks, and community and cultural centers. The firm was meticulous in its work, studying each block and meeting with the codevelopers, the consultant team, the City of Toronto, and community members to listen and respond to their needs and ideas for the neighborhood. “Our project team is familiar with most decisions made over the life of the project, carries project memory, and is equally invested in the long-term success of Regent Park,” Soules says. “We can respond confidently and quickly to design matters and are about halfway through the life of the project. It has been a complete honor to work on it. If I don’t do anything else in my career, I’d be quite happy.”

The second project that Soules points to is the National Arts Centre Rejuvenation project, which is set to renovate the Centennial building at the center of Ottawa. Built in the intense, geometric concrete style of the era and sometimes referred to as a bunker, the building will be transformed into a more open and accessible celebration of the performing arts for the twenty-first century.

Soules says the trick to the project is honoring the original structure but also making the wonderful interior spaces more visible and inviting. The first phase of the design expands the public interior spaces and creates greater connection to the exterior. This connection is accomplished by glazing the enclosure of new public

NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE

Located in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, the National Arts Centre (NAC) is a national landmark and a showcase for the best of the nation’s performing arts. The intense, geometric concrete structure was built in celebration of Canada’s centennial in 1967. Now, in anticipation of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebration, Diamond Schmitt Architects is working with the NAC to rejuvenate the building for the twenty-first century. It is set to open on Canada Day, July 1, 2017.

spaces to bring natural light into the existing building. Working with the existing equilateral triangle grid, the new structure encloses the expanded interiors with empathy to the original. The second phase will focus on the interior venue spaces and bring them up-to-date with the latest and most efficient equipment.

Soules praises the whole team for their dedication and flexibility. He predicts that the building will be ready to open for Canada’s 150th anniversary celebration on Canada Day, July 1, 2017.

During his more than twenty years at Diamond Schmitt, Soules has seen the company grow from less than thirty people to nearly 185. In fact, he interviewed and hired most of the current architectural employees himself. Soules got involved in the hiring process because he was invested in finding the right people with an artistic mind-set and passion to succeed. And it seems to be working: turnover is between 1 and 2 percent, which is well below industry average. Diamond Schmitt has also been named one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies the past eight consecutive years, which gives it the coveted Platinum Club status. It has also been named one of Canada’s top 100 Small and Medium Employers and a Greater Toronto Top Employer.

An avid basketball player, Soules shares that he found his management style through coaching. He takes developing new talent very seriously. “If we are going to hire students, you can’t have them running around doing errands,” he says. “If you want the best students, you need to give them meaningful jobs and let them work on the projects with the team.”

This commitment to knowledge and excellence extends to every part of the company’s process, including Soules’s approach to mentoring. Just like any coach, he shares all the knowledge he can to ensure the best for his team. “When I work with people,” he says, “I try to tell them everything I know about something and not hold back, to give them the fullest picture.”

Gillam Group is a progressive construction company specializing in the planning and management of mediumsized projects through a collaborative approach. We deliver our services in an atmosphere of teamwork, transparency, and trust.

On behalf of our principals Marcus Gillam, Joel Parke, and the entire management team, we are thankful to enjoy a long-standing and excellent relationship with Diamond Schmitt Architects. We are pleased to recognize Jon Soules for his leadership, vision, and extraordinary achievements. Jon is a cornerstone of our industry, and we look forward to continuing to deliver high-quality projects with Jon and his innovative practice.

Jon, congratulations on being featured in this article, your involvement in the National Arts Centre Rejuvenation and the Regent Park project. It is wonderful to see people excel in their chosen profession and then be recognized for their outstanding contributions.

Ruby Lougheed Yawney

CPA, CA, Hons.BBA, CFC, CFP, CIM, FCSI

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Linen and Law

In the fashion industry, the law can sometimes be more subjective than people realize. Kellwood Company’s Keith Grypp is helping his employees understand why.

BY RANDALL COLBURN

Kellwood Company has seen a lot of change over the years in areas such as focus, strategy, and leadership. Now, it’s one of the leading apparel manufacturers in the United States, and it sports a vast portfolio that encompasses women’s and junior’s brands, such as Democracy, My Michelle, Sangria, and Briggs NY. Few have been able to witness the company’s circuitous path quite like Keith Grypp, a twenty-five-year company veteran who has served as a financial auditor, systems analyst, and attorney, among other positions. Nobody knows Kellwood like Grypp, so it makes sense that he would want to bequeath that know-how to the company’s next generation.

About a year ago, Grypp and his team began organizing a series of in-house educational programs that focused on the legal aspects of the fashion industry. “There’s a lot of gray area and a lot of myths out there,” Grypp says. “I think many people always want to do the right thing, but they might not have the knowledge or understanding to always make the right choices.”

Human resources teamed with Grypp to help execute his vision after a survey about culture revealed that employees desired more opportunities for personal growth and training. Grypp also cites a few minor legal kerfuffles that indicated some training would be helpful. “It highlighted that maybe there are some issues out here that we should look into and address more broadly,” he says.

To begin, Grypp focused on what he considers to be some of the most critical areas: copyright law, employment law, and social media. Copyright laws fall under the wider umbrella of intellectual property, though Grypp notes that he works closest with Kellwood’s designers in areas of copyright. “A lot of their design is trenddriven,” he says. “What colors are popular? What prints? What designs? They need to be careful that they’re not infringing on somebody else’s copyrights.”

That’s a tricky subject, however. In the fashion industry, there’s no clear-cut rule as to whether or not there’s been a copyright violation. That doesn’t mean some designers don’t tell themselves

there are clear rules of thumb. “There are myths in the industry that if you change five elements in the print and design you’re OK, or that you just need to change the design by 20 percent,” he explains. “Designers hear this in the industry and they think it’s the law, but it’s more subjective than that.”

Grypp says it comes down to two areas: it can’t be a copy, and it can’t be substantially similar. “You can’t just go in and change five things and assume it’s not substantially similar,” he says. “You have to look at what you’re being inspired by and make sure your creation is developed and changed so that it’s your idea and not a copy of somebody else’s idea.”

Since copyright violations can be difficult to pinpoint, Grypp works to ensure his sessions incorporate real-life examples that have happened at Kellwood. “That allows them to ask specific questions and reference similar situations they are dealing with,” he says. It’s important to Grypp that the training feels targeted toward not only the fashion industry, but also to Kellwood specifically.

Another area that can be tricky to navigate is social media. For Grypp, it’s important that those who operate the company’s numerous social media accounts—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—understand the difference between a personal account and a business account. On Twitter, for example, retweeting a celebrity’s tweet is fine for a personal account, but on a business account like Kellwood’s, it could come across as an endorsement by that celebrity. “If we don’t have an endorsement from that movie star,” he says, “they obviously might have issues with us using their name.” The same goes for trademarks that might, unintentionally, appear in the background of photos.

These are the sort of minute aspects that most don’t think about when using social media. “People are so ingrained in it; it’s part of their lives,” Grypp says. “They think about it from their

Keith Grypp

Senior Vice President and General Counsel

KELLWOOD COMPANY

Sills Cummis & Gross applauds for his LEADERSHIP VISION

SUCCESS

“When you’re not educating people, they just start doing what they think is good for the company—and it might not be.”

KEITH GRYPP

personal point of view, but when they’re acting on behalf of the company, they have to act otherwise.”

However, the industry’s legal peculiarities can be overwhelming for employees, which is why Grypp believes most issues occur by accident or merely out of good intentions. He cites the latter particularly when discussing employment law. “Employees think they’re helping, but it’s not doing the company any favors if you are not abiding by the law,” Grypp explains. As examples, he notes employees who work through breaks or managers that take it easy on an employee by not properly documenting an infraction.

Grypp is happy with how the trainings have gone thus far and has plans to fold issues of social and product compliance in soon. He also notes an unexpected benefit: better working relationships across the board. “It’s a good two-way street between legal and the business,” he says.

It’s also common sense. A basic understanding of an industry’s law saves everyone time and effort in the long run. Grypp sums it up well: “When you’re not educating people, they just start doing what they think is good for the company—and it might not be.”

Serving Up Solutions

Puja Gatton explains why Texas Roadhouse considers itself a people-focused company that also sells steaks

BY KELLI LAWRENCE

The tip-off that Texas Roadhouse does things a little differently than most popular casual dining chains is a small, yet telling detail: what would typically be called a corporate headquarters is instead known as the support center. In fact, the words “Support Center” are given equal billing in size and stature to the Texas Roadhouse logo on the side of the building.

The restaurant chain’s twenty-four-person legal department has adopted this supportive mentality; the team has established a strong reputation within the company for being a true business partner to other departments and field operations. In fact, the legal team’s internal mission statement is a call to not only protect, but also grow the brand. “We don’t want to be the ‘team of no.’ Everyone on the legal team strives to be proactive strategists more than we are compliance managers,” says Puja Gatton, senior counsel of litigation and employment. “We want to help provide creative solutions whenever possible to help support the business.”

Like Texas Roadhouse’s signature bucket of peanuts in the front lobby, fun pictures in the hallways, in-house contests, and the thank you notes that “roadies” (employees) send each other, the legal department’s attitude is quite befitting to the company culture. “Our company culture helps shape what we do every day and creates a more emotionally invested and more passionate workforce,” she says. “It is clear that we put our money where our mouth is when it comes to treating our employees like family.”

Gatton originally envisioned being a psychiatrist, not a lawyer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Northwestern University before changing course and enrolling in law school. However, her love of and interest in listening to people and her ability to effectively troubleshoot have become invaluable tools in her current role at Texas Roadhouse.

“Employment law is truly about people and the relationships between people and their employer,” she explains. “It’s, ‘This employee is acting X way, and we need to determine if solution Y

PUJA

SENIOR COUNSEL OF LITIGATION, EMPLOYMENT

LOUISVILLE, KY

or Z is going to be best for the situation.’ At minimum, this requires the ability to understand the perspectives of all individuals involved, as well as a fundamental understanding of the potential solutions available. So, I think my interests in listening and troubleshooting lend themselves very well to this area of law.”

In providing consultation, developing policy, and managing litigation, Gatton represents Texas Roadhouse’s core values of passion, partnership, integrity, and fun, with purpose in her work. The company’s entrepreneurial spirit is reflected in the fact that each restaurant’s managing partner has a significant level of autonomy and ownership in the restaurant. The biggest challenge with decentralized authority, from Gatton’s point of view, is finding a way to walk managing partners back that doesn’t discourage them too much. “We try as much as possible to let them run their own show,” she says. “We opt for a much more collaborative approach in how we partner on business decisions.”

Keeping up with the requirements of state and federal law is another challenge in itself for Texas Roadhouse, which has about fifty thousand employees. Since its founding restaurant opened near Louisville in 1993, the business has grown to cover forty-nine states and five foreign countries. The company opens roughly thirty new restaurants per year. Ongoing growth creates an ever-increasing chance of employee issues, but Gatton feels the sooner the legal team can partner with the restaurant managers, the better. “I believe complaints or issues raised by employees can be a gift,” she says. “If management is made aware of an issue, they can take steps to make the situation better before it gets worse.”

GATTON

TEXAS ROADHOUSE

Bill Craig

“Employment law is truly about people and the relationships between people and their employer. It’s, ‘This employee is acting X way, and we need to determine if solution Y or Z is going to be best for the situation.’ ”

PUJA GATTON

On a larger scale, Gatton’s work is about helping to protect the company’s brand by providing guidance on a variety of issues to better support the restaurants and its managing partners. In managing litigation related to something that might happen at a restaurant under the Texas Roadhouse umbrella, she’s able to take a considerable load off that managing partner’s mind. “So, what I’m saying to the team at that restaurant is, ‘I’ve got this. You go back to focusing on what you do best: legendary food, legendary service. Let me handle this for you,’” Gatton says.

In a career that has included plenty of legal research and writing, advice and counsel, and litigation in private practice before turning to in-house work (she spent six years working in-house for a senior living organization before joining Texas Roadhouse in 2014), Gatton has developed a deep appreciation for the makings of a great workplace: purposeful core values, a progressive attitude, and the philosophy that if you treat people right and they’re willing to learn, everything else sorts itself out. “I’m a fellow roadie with people who are my internal clients,” she says. “I gain credibility because they know I’m just as passionate about the brand as they are.”

LITTLER MENDELSON WOULD LIKE TO CONGRATULATE PUJA GATTON ON THIS WELL-DESERVED RECOGNITION. PUJA IS ADEPT AT FULLY UNDERSTANDING THE LEGAL ISSUES AND APPLYING THEM IN A COMMON-SENSE WAY. SHE SERVES HER COMPANY EXTREMELY WELL AND IS A GREAT LEGAL PARTNER. THANK YOU, PUJA, FOR ALL THAT YOU DO!

Littler congratulates Puja Gatton at Texas Roadhouse for her accomplishments and contributions to the legal profession. We are proud to call Puja our partner in business.

littler.com

ABOUT LITTLER:

Littler is the largest global employment and labor law practice, with more than 1,000 attorneys in over 70 offices worldwide. Littler represents management in all aspects of employment and labor law and serves as a single-source solution provider to the global employer community. Consistently recognized in the industry as a leading and innovative law practice, Littler has been litigating, mediating and negotiating some of the most influential employment law cases and labor contracts on record for over 70 years. Littler Global is the collective trade name for an international legal practice, the practicing entities of which are separate and distinct professional firms. For more information visit littler.com.

Theory of Evolution

Realty ONE Group is creating innovative tools and business strategies for supporting agents and maintaining customers

By JEFF SILVER

Congratulations to Dan Hart and Realty ONE. Century Business

is proud to be a strategic partner.

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• Monitor, manage and optimize your print output, end to end, regardless of printer brand.

• Provide monitoring of your printing environment and use ongoing process improvements to save your company time and money.

• Reduce environmental footprint

OUTSOURCED IT SUPPORT:

• IT help desk support

• Provide network management and information technology (IT) integration

Realtors and the real estate industry have followed one particular business model for generations: assist buyers and sellers with their transactions in exchange for a percentage of the price that is split between the agent and their broker. Due to transitions in economics, business philosophies, and the growing role of technology, things are changing—and Realty ONE Group is leading the way.

Established in 2005, Realty ONE Group has experienced exponential growth since its founding and has expanded to 18 states and nearly 10,000 agents. In the past 3 years, gross annual sales have doubled to $15 billion, which amounts to a home sold every 15 minutes. Yearover-year growth has been 25 percent for 3 years, and its franchise business has grown 97 percent in 5 years. It has also diversified into an escrow operation, a title company, and property management.

Aside from the pace of its success, Realty ONE Group differentiates itself from traditional brokerages in several ways. The most obvious is its fee model, which replaces the agent/broker split with a flat transaction fee that enables agents to keep 100 percent of their commissions.

Dan Hart, chief financial officer, points out that, even in down markets, this approach helps support agents’ bottom line. “If there’s a shift that reduces agents’ volume, our fee model enables them to keep what they earn,” he says. “In the long run, it’s in their best interest.”

Realty ONE Group has also been structured to encourage innovation and collaboration at all levels. This is accomplished by minimizing bureaucracy, implementing an open-door policy for all executives, and maintaining a relaxed atmosphere that extends to senior management. The nameplate on founder and CEO Kuba ieniew’s door reads “Chief Trouble-Maker.” Hart’s reads “Dictator of Dollars.”

To engage agents and empower their success, the group places a great deal of emphasis on the six Cs: “coolture,” commission, care, community, coaching, and connect. Coolture is the company’s unique corporate culture. Commission is defined as just that, commission. Care refers to the internal agent support system. Community means participating in various activities that address local issues and benefit local populations in Realty ONE Group’s many locations. Coaching is provided through regular meetings at corporate offices, the open-door policy that helps with individual transactions, and ONE University (ONE-U), the

ONE Group Irvine, CA

Dan Hart CFO

Realty

company’s training arm. ONE-U offers the Rev Up and Level Up programs that help new staff and franchisees get started and improve the practice of established agents and offices.

The final C, connect, refers to IT capabilities and addressing the real estate industry’s lack of robust, comprehensive technology solutions. For example, there are more than nine hundred multiple listing services (MLSs) in the United States, but they do not share information; they restrict membership and typically offer real-time data that is only 70–80 percent accurate.

Hart believes that data needs to be delivered directly to users. That way, they don’t need to purchase information from companies like Zillow, Trulia, and CoreLogic. He envisions a cradle-to-grave suite that integrates every component of each transaction and the overall customer life cycle—the Amazon of real estate.

“We want to go beyond real estate data elements and transactions to offer ancillary services, so we can develop and maintain customer relationships,” Hart explains. “We can be a resource for discounted home warranties, mortgages, 1031 exchanges, and other home services, so when it’s time for customers to move again, we’re ready to help them. We’ll be a one-stop shop for everything from escrow to electricians.”

The company is preparing to roll out a transactional platform that combines MLS listings with real-time data from agents and additional aggregated information from third-party suppliers. Realty ONE plans to launch many of these capabilities this year. The ultimate goal is a business-solutions platform that presents an icon-based portal, much like the face of an iPhone, that agents and customers have at their fingertips to access any real estate-related resource at any given moment.

Just as Realty ONE Group is changing real estate compensation models and technology, Hart believes his own role as CFO is also changing to incorporate many functions

that would typically fall to the chief operating officer. In addition to traditional financial reporting and budget responsibilities, he is now involved in leveraging technology to drive smarter decisions in operational issues, which range from compensation and sales plans to the cost of process flows and transactions.

“Almost anything that has a dollar driver attached to it now needs the CFO in the room to ensure we take the best advantage of a wide range of business opportunities,” he says.

As the relevance of and reliance on technology increases, the challenge will come when customers are able to research property listings and all the associated transaction processes on their phone and then ask why they need an agent at all. “Traditional companies can’t change fast enough to keep up, but we’ve laid a foundation to be nimble and adaptable and to make the most out of these new challenges,” Hart says. “We’re leading the way to what technology in real estate is going to look like.”

With that in mind, he expects Realty ONE Group to hit the 100,000-agent mark within five years—only the fifth real estate company to ever accomplish that feat.

“Traditional companies can’t change fast enough to keep up, but we’ve laid a foundation to be nimble and adaptable.”

DAN HART

Turning Integrity into a Competitive Advantage

Catherine Muldoon, chief legal officer of BDP International, explains how the organization’s ethics and fair business practices give her company a competitive edge

BY DAVID LEVINE

Catherine Muldoon has always had a strong sense of right and wrong. “It’s a mind-set my parents encouraged in me: giving people a fair chance is both honorable and productive in its empowerment,” she says.

As chief legal officer of BDP International Inc., Muldoon has taken that deeply held belief in fairness and helped highlight how it embodies the company’s corporate culture. Founded in 1966 by Richard Bolte Sr., BDP is a privately held, family-owned global logistics provider based in Philadelphia that operates freight logistics centers in 270 cities across the world.

BDP is one of the most ethical companies in the world, according to the Ethisphere Institute, a global think tank on business ethics. Its World’s Most Ethical Companies program honors companies that excel in ethical business standards and practices. In 2016, Ethisphere named BDP one of its honorees in a field that spans twenty-one countries, five continents, and forty-five industries.

“A culture of integrity has always been at the heart of the company,” Muldoon says. In her fourteen years at BDP, she has expanded and codified BDP’s anticorruption efforts as the company has grown to cover larger global territory. Muldoon actually began her career in BDP’s executive training program right out of college from Johns Hopkins University. After two years, she left to earn her law degree from Seton Hall University. All the while, though, she maintained a relationship with BDP. After a decade acquiring litigation and business skills at private law firms, she approached Rich Bolte—the son of BDP’s founder, current CEO of the company, and someone whom she always admired for his leadership and values—about a job. “I identified BDP as a fantastic opportunity for me to take my skills back to the business world and the perfect platform for me to use fairness in business as a tool to support communities globally,” she recalls.

The Boltes saw the world the same way and allowed Muldoon to incorporate that worldview into her role as corporate counsel. She was fortunate to join the company just as it embarked on extensive worldwide growth through acquisitions of foreign companies. “What really impressed me about Rich and BDP was how appreciative they are of the different business cultures and communities and how they drive ethics and charity from the top,” she says. “As we acquired companies globally, BDP integrated its company values while respecting and valuing the local cultures of those companies. When I visit our operations in, say, Thailand

or Chile, I am so proud to see BDP’s culture of integrity throughout this global network. Our mantra—one BDP— defines our culture perfectly.”

Integrity, sadly, is not a universal business practice. Outright corruption runs rampant in many parts of the world, and it exists more subtly in others. “It is very difficult to conduct business in a clean way in many jurisdictions,” Muldoon says. “You have to choose partners very wisely and be diligent not only at the onset but as you move your business relationship forward. We have turned down business in some countries because of this.”

BDP’s anticorruption program, which was

Muldoon’s brainchild, began about twelve years ago. “We wanted to be sure we managed this growth in a way that protected us and that it was clear to all that our efforts were being driven straight from corporate headquarters throughout our entire global platform,” she says. She took best practices from around the world and wove them into BDP policy. “Our contracts include mutual protection, so there is little risk for either party to get into a situation that could give rise to a violation,” she says.

The result of the project has been, in her words, astounding. In fact, the company has never been in violation of ethics. “We have never even had an investigation by our government or any other government where we conduct business,” she says. “That is almost unheard of in our industry and can only be described as a competitive advantage. We are the trusted business partner of all of our clients.”

Muldoon also led the efforts to write and manage BDP’s code of conduct. She describes the code as a principled approach to ethics that speaks to good business practices. “Our expectation is high that our people make good business decisions,” she says. “It’s about knowing right from wrong. Would you be able to go on the news and feel good about what you did?”

All employees are trained in BDP’s expectations and sign off on the code. The company encourages, even requires, employees to report problems up the chain of command with no fear of reprisal. “Whistle-blowers are our heroes,” she says. “Any retaliation against that whistle-blower puts you at risk and is not tolerated at BDP.”

BDP is currently expanding its presence in Africa, and Muldoon is working to support human rights in Morocco and Egypt from her position at BDP and as a member of the UN advisory board for anticorruption.

It’s all part of what she calls the three buckets of BDP’s ethics program. The first bucket is a culture of integrity. This includes the code of conduct, corporate governance, compliance, and corporate values, and it starts with treating each other with respect. The next bucket is corporate social responsibility, a mission that BDP is trying to centralize with charitable initiatives all over the world. “We are reaching out to communities to ensure we are a good corporate citizen,” she says.

The third bucket is reputation and branding. “We have won awards for our ethical standards, but there are still people around the world who aren’t aware of that,” she says. “We will continue to communicate through our words and practices to let people know that we are a trusted business partner anywhere in the world.”

BDP INTERNATIONAL

PHILADELPHIA, PA

Hard-Driven

Robert Pechman uses his technological background to safeguard Seagate Technology’s intellectual property innovations in hard drive technology

BY RUSS GAGER

When Robert Pechman was a college undergraduate, he was told that his study of mathematics and physics would get him a good job at a company located where he wanted to live. But after earning a master’s degree in materials science and working on a PhD etching semiconductors in the 1990s, he saw his classmates sending out hundreds of résumés and having to move to places they did not want to live.

Following a conversation with a patent lawyer at 3M about patent law, Pechman left the PhD program, attended law school, and began working part-time and summers at 3M as a patent law intern during his second year of law school. After eleven years at 3M and a stint in private practice, he joined the in-house practice at Seagate Technology in December 2008, realizing that he most enjoyed consulting with inventors about the best way to patent their innovations.

At Seagate Technology—which designs and manufactures hard disk drives and other data storage devices and systems—Pechman, who is chief intellectual property counsel, seeks creative solutions to what inventors are trying to do from a very specific viewpoint. “My job as a patent attorney is to help them ferret out some broader implications of their inventions,” Pechman says. “What we’re protecting is more focused on the business needs and the product we’re trying to protect, as opposed to just being a technical paper describing what the inventor did.”

The choice of which innovations to patent and how to protect those patents depends on Seagate Technology’s business objectives and market demands. Pechman emphasizes that Seagate is a data company rather than just a storage company. “Even though storage is where we make our money, in order to be designing storage products, you need to understand how data is used and not just how data gets stored,” he says.

Seagate’s customer base has evolved from computer hardware companies and the companies running server farms in the cloud to

the companies that are managing and using data, such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

Referring to data storage as being in the cloud can be misleading. That cloud is actually located in server farms throughout the world, and much of its data is stored on innovative hard drives designed and manufactured by Seagate. The company estimates that by 2020, 1,800 exabytes of data will be installed in data centers around the world; each exabyte is one billion gigabytes. Of that, cloud data centers will account for 1,300 exabytes of installed storage—more than 70 percent of all data center storage.

“The cloud is a good analogy for remote data storage, but the word is too ethereal to have a lot of meaning,” Pechman says. “In reality, these data centers are actual physical things, and where they are located makes a big difference. Having your data located closer to where it’s going to be accessed and used has a huge impact on performance, latency, and how quickly people can get access to their data.”

Seagate’s products need to be designed to meet the power, performance, and security requirements of its customers for uses that include managing security surveillance video, streaming video, and accessing data for consumers’ mobile devices.

“We’re not the ones controlling the data; we’re the ones building features that help analysis take place,” Pechman explains. “We have this opportunity to help customers learn how to better use their massive amounts of data. The more people find data useful, the more data they are going to accumulate, create, and store, which is good for a storage company. It’s a really interesting time to be in the storage business with the explosion of data.” Seagate forecasts that by 2020, the total amount of data created by the Internet of Things will be about six hundred zettabytes, with each zettabyte equaling approximately one billion terabytes.

Hard drives are complex technological devices that rely on a constant flow of innovation to meet the ever-growing demands for greater data storage capacity. Pechman compares the operation of a hard drive to flying a 747 airplane at ten times the speed of sound a few inches above a lawn and counting the blades of grass.

“To manufacture something like that at the yields we do and with the precision we do is pretty remarkable,” Pechman says. Consequently, Seagate’s intellectual property protects not only its hard drive

ROBERT PECHMAN

CHIEF IP COUNSEL

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY

MINNEAPOLIS, MN

We congratulate our colleague Bob Pechman for his successful leadership and accomplishments at

“It’s not the legal document that is our product. My products at the end of the day are millions of hard drives that get shipped out.”

ROBERT PECHMAN

designs, but also the high-precision manufacturing techniques and equipment required to produce them.

Pechman’s department of attorneys and paralegals supervises law firms that are hired to file the patents on its products quickly. “We have a pretty small and mighty team, as we like to say,” Pechman says. The department has seven patent attorneys, each responsible for a separate business or technology area.

The company’s attorneys are sometimes shifted among its different technologies. “It’s a good thing to cross-pollinate so people see other sides of the business,” Pechman says. “It’s about flexibility in my team and playing to people’s strengths.”

Most of the attorneys have either an electronics or software computer engineering background, though some also have backgrounds in mechanical or chemical engineering or biology. “When I hire a patent attorney, they need to be able to understand the technology they will be working with,” Pechman says. “But I’m not hiring an engineer; I’m hiring an attorney, and it’s their skills as an attorney first and foremost that matter.”

That skill as an attorney is what Seagate relies on as the speed of innovation increases. Pechman understands that the efforts of his department are not an end in themselves but rather in the service of a larger cause. “It’s not the legal document that is our product,” Pechman says. “My products, at the end of the day, are millions of hard drives that get shipped out. I happen to play a small role as a part of that business team to make sure that happens.”

CULTURE

The Career Coach

How Bob Ravener is creating a career culture at Dollar General

By CHRIS GIGLEY

BBob Ravener has made a career out of being a people person. As executive vice president and chief people officer at Nashville-based retailer Dollar General, Ravener, the company, and his HR leadership team are focused on putting employees in the best possible situations to advance their skills, take on new responsibilities, and grow their careers. And they do, mostly within Dollar General.

“I’m proud of the fact that, at the store support center for three years running, three of every four job openings are filled from within,” says Ravener, who joined Dollar General in 2008. “More than nine thousand of our store managers were promoted from within. I, along with our leadership team, get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people grow and achieve their career goals and aspirations.”

Ravener knows how that feels. A graduate of the US Naval Academy who also has an MBA from New York University, he has gone on to hold important leadership positions in human resources at several of the most iconic brands in the world, including PepsiCo, Starbucks, and The Home Depot.

However, success is about more than being part of large, successful companies. According to Ravener, it’s just as much about learning from many different experiences.

“I can go back to my time in the military as a twentythree-year-old standing on top of the conning tower of an 8,600-ton nuclear sub, responsible for the safety of 150 men aboard and tremendous fire power to help defend the nation,” he says. “That’s emblematic of the military. You get a lot of experience at very early stages of your career, something I try to emulate with others. I am a big fan of hiring the talent and then training for the skills needed to be successful.”

Ravener brings all his experience to bear in his current role at Dollar General. And with his fair share of responsibilities, he has the opportunity to bring wisdom to many different areas of the company.

Ravener says his role is pretty much anything dealing with people. He and his team are involved with everything from hiring to compensation, training to benefits,

culture to structure. He spends the majority of his time on macro, strategic, and systemic initiatives because he has a great team of professionals that can handle most day-to-day challenges.

“You are only as good as the people around you, so I invest a great deal of time in coaching and surrounding myself with the best,” he says. “I’d put my team and colleagues at Dollar General up against any others in retail.”

Having such a great team allows Ravener to adjust to problems as they come along. At Dollar General, no two days are ever the same, and no matter how much you plan ahead, there are always curveballs thrown your way.

At the end of the day, Ravener tries to put most of his emphasis on his passion, which is people development. He wouldn’t be able to have such a great team if he didn’t have a history of being a part of great teams. To him, helping others advance in their careers is merely a way to pay it forward.

“One of the things that has made a big difference in my life is having a lot of good role models and strong team members around me,” he says. “I’m grateful to the teachers, coaches, and business leaders who took personal interest in me and saw potential and gave me their time and talents. That’s helped form who I’ve become over the last thirty years, and nothing gives me greater satisfaction than seeing others grow and achieve their own success.”

Aside from focusing on developing people, Ravener also has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. His daily info intake includes multiple newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and books. And Ravener is not only constantly researching, reading, asking questions, and trying to be more self-developed in every spare moment, but he is also sharing what he learns with others.

In fact, Ravener’s life experiences even spawned his own book: Up! The Difference Between Today and Tomorrow Is You, which was published in 2013. “Basically, it’s about overcoming adversity in life,” he explains. “It’s a personal memoir, but it also has tools and tips for overcoming adversity. It’s a story of someone who started with

Bob Ravener EVP, Chief People Officer

General Nashville, TN

Dollar

SIGNATURE TENACITY

Bob Ravener never gives up. He first played, then coached, baseball at the Naval Academy, and he was on the field in 1985 for an exhibition game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Midshipmen. In an improbable 4-3 Navy win that day, he had many of the Orioles sign a game ball—except one notable omission. Cal Ripken Jr. did not make the trip to Annapolis for that game due to an on-field injury the previous day. Not until he met Ripken in 2013 did Ravener finally get the hall-of-famer’s autograph on that ball. Ripken, baseball’s all-time leader in consecutive games played, had to admire that kind of determination.

nothing and made something of himself, with a lot of help from mentors. In summary, life happens. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

Overcoming adversity in his own life may be why he enjoys working in retail so much. At Dollar General, Ravener sees that rise from the bottom rung of the career ladder to the top of one’s own goals all the time.

“I’m a big fan of retail to gain life experiences; I get frustrated when I hear retail positions portrayed negatively,” he says. “Retail is one of the last places where people can come out of high school and—if they leverage their emotional agility, work ethic, and coachability—go as far as their career aspirations will take them.”

Dollar General employees get an extra boost from having Ravener as their HR executive. He is squarely focused on acquiring, developing, and promoting employees over the long haul.

Identifying management material begins by figuring out an employee’s ability to grasp store management basics, which requires strong leadership abilities and business acumen. Each Dollar General store has about

THANK YOU FOR TRUSTING YOUR FAMILY WITH OUR FAMILY.

For 17 years, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has been proud to cover the health and wellness needs of Dollar General employees and their families.

Thank you for your business, from our family to yours.

“You don’t learn as much from success as you do from failure and realworld experience.”

BOB RAVENER

ten thousand stock-keeping units, which is a lot to track. Good organizational skills are a must.

“You also have to have good emotional intelligence, which means a knack for customer service,” Ravener says. “Overall, you’ve got to be able to multitask across a wide spectrum of activities.”

It’s no surprise, then, that employee training is such a big focus at Dollar General. One of the HR team’s latest projects was revising field training programs, beginning with district managers in 2015. Last year, Ravener and his team revamped the training program for distribution leaders and store managers, and they also elevated the stature of the more than one thousand training store managers, a group that is crucial to the organization.

Another initiative Ravener’s retail HR team has led is an annual internal career day for hourly employees. They can go on-site for the event or participate remotely and ask executives questions about career paths and opportunities within Dollar General.

To help advance people from within, the company tracks the progress of highpotential employees and puts them through a rigorous assessment process to determine whether they’re ready for the next level.

“You need the right person in place who exercises good judgment,” Ravener says. “We also have the right policies and procedures as a compass to guide them in doing what they need to do to keep the store running

smoothly. Having both ought to take care of 98 percent of the issues that emerge.”

But like his own job, store manager and distribution leadership roles always have unexpected challenges. When things come up, Ravener wants managers to make the right call and ask for help if they need it. After all, the company promotes an environment where leaders are around to support, coach, and help managers to break down barriers and solve problems.

Ravener has firsthand experience and knows how important it is to make the call for yourself. He wouldn’t be where he is today if he wasn’t allowed to learn from mistakes along the way.

“You don’t learn as much from success as you do from failure and real-world experience,” he says. “When you overcome a challenge, you’ve either had that experience before and learned from it, or you’ve forged improved judgment and developed guiding principles that will help you make better decisions in the future.”

Over the course of his career, Ravener has shown a knack for making good decisions, made even better with strong collaboration with his team. Being part of Dollar General’s growth story and the people who make it happen is just the latest success story.

Dollar General Driving Compensation Strategy with PeopleFluent

The way an organization rewards its people is an important part of its talent strategy. Just as important as the rewards themselves is the individual’s understanding of his/her rewards and how they support the business’s mission. With thousands of employees and compensation programs that reward people from the front line to the executive office, integrating your rewards programs into the culture is crucial.

Large, complex organizations like Dollar General require support for unique plans, metrics, and rules to ensure the efficacy of programs to the business’s bottom line. Making real-time information and tools easily accessible empowers leaders to make more informed decisions.

PeopleFluent is a recognized leader in compensation management, providing solutions to companies like Dollar General that understand the importance of the link between people and business outcomes. The company helps strengthen that link, enabling Dollar General to focus on the success of the organization and its people.

USAble Life is honored to provide the employees of Dollar General with benefits that give them peace of mind to focus on what matters most. We would like to congratulate Bob Ravener and his team for cultivating a high-performing workforce that enables their company and the communities it serves to thrive. We’re proud to support them in their mission and wish Bob and his team continued growth and success. LEARN HOW WE

The Value of Family-Style Learning Strategy

In a challenging market, Liz Volk helps grocery chain Longo’s thrive by imploring a simple mantra: people first

By KELLI LAWRENCE

A grocery chain looking to thrive in the complex greater Toronto area needs to know a few things about itself to build a brand that can hold its own. For Longo’s, those defining factors are pretty straightforward: the company is Toronto-based, family-owned, privately run, focused on fresh quality products and friendly service, and long-standing, with more than sixty years of history.

However, as the company grew, it needed someone to build out and evolve the people strategy. In 2006, Liz Volk became that someone when she assumed the role of vice president of human resources. “The people strategy must be aligned to business strategy and must be ever evolving because our business is growing and changing,” she says. “Strategy has to have a lot of flexibility inside it to grow and adapt.”

For Longo’s, that strategy starts with the talent acquisition processes and approaches. It then moves on to how people learn in the organization, how new team members are trained, how the company rewards its people, and how it keeps them safe and healthy. “Our belief is if we can to help our team members be the best they can be—healthy, active members of the community—that also plays out in how they impact our customers,” Volk says.

The efforts made toward well-being for Longo’s team members include online wellness programs, healthy living workshops, guest speakers that cover financial as well as physical well-being, and an extensive benefits plan to support team members and their families. The company has

Liz Volk VP Human Resources

Longo’s Vaughan, ON

even joined forces with Toronto’s Humber College, which gives team members access to on-campus gym memberships and the opportunity to work with aspiring personal trainers.

Volk’s work with Ceridian human capital management system Dayforce proves to be another key partnership. Through that agreement, Longo’s team members can utilize cloud technology to view work schedules, request time off, view pay information, and sign up for benefits. Volk, meanwhile, uses it for labor management, time and attendance tracking, benefits, and employee self-serve options.

Working directly with vendors produces benefits in Longo’s employee training, as well. For example, it’s not uncommon for team members in specialty areas like the deli to travel to get better educated about the products that they work with and sell every day. “We do a lot of partnerships, particularly with our vendor community,” Volk explains. “That way, our team members can really understand where our food is sourced from all the way through to bringing it to life in our stores, so they can help our customers in being educated as well.”

All of this ties back into the treat-youlike-family culture that Longo’s continuously strives for with its customers. Volk calls it their secret sauce. “That really strong sense of service and friendliness differentiates us from some pretty big players in the market,” she says. In fact, Waterstone Human Capital named Longo’s one of Canada’s Top 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures in 2015—which begat Volk’s current board position for determining that award.

Since she came on board at Longo’s in 2006, the organization has tripled in size, from two thousand team members to roughly six thousand. Now, the challenge is sustaining that culture while the company becomes successful enough to hold its own alongside the bigger, more prolific competitors.

One way to sustain that culture is through employee initiatives, which are intended to translate into a clearly defined employment brand, even as the organization spreads beyond the bounds of the greater Toronto area. “Because Longo’s has such a strong consumer brand here in Toronto, we’ve been able to leverage that to recruit and bring on new team members,” Volk says. “But we’re now of a much larger size and moving into some lesser-known areas for us, and it’s time to really have our own employment brand that dovetails the company brand.”

The recruiting, learning, and well-being strategies implemented by Volk are all part

“Our belief is if we can help our team members be the best they can be—healthy, active members of the community— that also plays out in how they impact our customers.”

LIZ VOLK

of that employment brand. The bigger picture for her, though, is a learning strategy that maps out an employee’s career at Longo’s. By studying the trajectories of its own people, she says, Longo’s can help with a blueprint for their future in the grocery industry. That could mean cross-training in different areas of the same store, or it might involve work at other locations.

“We don’t have it all mapped out yet, but we felt it was crucial at this stage of evolution with the company [to get it started] because we’re building out one to two stores a year and also have a growing online business,” Volk says. “It’s important to determine how our learning strategy is going to play out over the next three to five years.”

One thing is clear: Longo’s culture will be integrated throughout every step of the process. “From the moment you’re onboarded to every training development we have, conferences, and talent planning,” Volk says, “There’s always a component that aligns back to treating you like family.”

Ceridian is proud to be a long-time partner of Longo’s. Ceridian’s cloud-based solution, Dayforce, enables Longo’s to view work schedules and pay information, and to request time off. In addition, Longo’s utilizes Dayforce for labor management, time and attendance, benefits, and employee self-service options. Dayforce provides organizations with access to real-time data and results across all domains of Human Capital Management with one application, one employee record, and one user experience.

Keep the Party Going

Karen Sheehan, Tupperware Brands’ first female general counsel, reveals how the iconic brand stays relevant by expanding its portfolio, evolving products, and staying committed to empowering women

BY PORCSHE N. MORAN

In the 1950s, Tupperware founder Earl Tupper hired businesswoman Brownie Wise to be the vice president of his home products company. At the time, she was one of the few women in the United States who held an executive position. Almost seventy years later, Karen Sheehan is stepping into the role of Tupperware Brands’ first female general counsel. Although colorful plastic bowls with airtight seals might be the first things that come to mind when people think of Tupperware, the corporation’s foundation is its commitment to enlighten, educate, and empower women around the world. Women make up more than 90 percent of Tupperware’s global sales force, which consists of more than three million independent business owners.

“It is an exciting and an unusual opportunity to work for a company like this,” Sheehan says. “What is striking to me is that the iconic household products are only half of the Tupperware story. The other part is the opportunity for people, largely women, to realize their dreams of entrepreneurship, financial independence, self-respect, and self-empowerment.”

Sheehan joined Tupperware Brands in December 2014 as the vice president and deputy general counsel. The board of directors promoted her to senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary on January 1, 2017. In that role, Sheehan, a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, manages Tupperware’s global law department. She supervises a team of six in-house lawyers at the company’s corporate headquarters in Orlando, Florida, and in Europe, and she also indirectly oversees seventeen other Tupperware lawyers who work across the company’s offices in North America, South America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

“Over 90 percent of our sales are outside of the United States,” Sheehan says. “Since I started at Tupperware Brands, I’ve traveled several times to Singapore, India, Europe, Brazil, and Mexico. I want to be in the room with the legal staff and the regional presidents in these countries to hear their goals and challenges. I want them to know that I care and that I am in the same boat rowing along with them.”

KAREN SHEEHAN SVP, GENERAL COUNSEL, SECRETARY

TUPPERWARE BRANDS ORLANDO, FL

Congratulations to Karen Sheehan and Tupperware for continuing to show that fresh ideas never go stale.

“I stand on the shoulders of the generations of women before me. If I can pay it forward by working for a company that empowers women all over the world, who maybe don’t have the opportunities that I have, that is fantastic.”

KAREN SHEEHAN

To that end, Sheehan takes a servant leadership approach to management. As general counsel, she says she focuses on meeting the needs of the lawyers in her department. Sheehan has an opendoor policy and schedules biweekly, one-on-one meetings with each of her lawyers to keep the lines of communication open.

“Each lawyer has my undivided attention during their meetings,” Sheehan says. “They set the agenda. They can update me on whatever they want to update me on. They can ask me questions. I want to make sure that they feel supported as a group and as individuals. Only through me serving them will the legal department be effective in meeting the company’s objectives.”

Aside from her hands-on work with Tupperware’s legal team, Sheehan stresses that gaining knowledge of every aspect of Tupperware Brands is vital, especially coming from previous positions in the pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods industries. She interacts with the organization’s top executives, including the heads of every area of the corporation, from human resources to finance, and IT to public relations.

“It is critically important to me that I spend my days trying to understand what the drivers are for each of the different functions in the company,” Sheehan says. “If I gave legal advice in a vacuum— without understanding the company culture, the people, and the strategy and vision for where the company wanted to go—my advice would be generic and irrelevant.”

Tupperware reported $2.2 billion in sales in 2016. Over the years, it has expanded its product lines to include cookware,

ovenware, culinary tools, and more. The company has also acquired six beauty and personal care brands: Avroy Shlain, BeautiControl, Fuller, NaturCare, Nutrimetics, and Nuvo.

“The table legs of the Tupperware organization are the great quality products, the group demonstration selling, and the strong culture of supporting people and building relationships,” Sheehan says. “This has been our platform to grow internationally, increase the variety of products, and stay innovative.”

In another effort to help empower women, Tupperware also emphasizes social responsibility through its involvement in philanthropic initiatives that support global health issues, disaster relief, and women’s and children’s causes. The company established the Tupperware Brands Foundation to set aside resources for organizations around the world that help women and girls. Its W.H.O. (Women Helping Others) Foundation aids communityfocused charities for overlooked women, children, and families. Tupperware Brands is also a partner with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and UN Women, the United Nations agency for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Sheehan has provided legal advice and guidance in these efforts.

“I stand on the shoulders of the generations of women before me,” she says. “I feel lucky that I am in a generation that is treated with much more equality than past generations. If I can pay it forward by working for a company that empowers women all over the world, who maybe don’t have the opportunities that I have, that is fantastic.”

All the Right Ingredients

By cultivating a culture of servant leadership, chief human resources officer Michael Keane hopes to bring about P.F. Chang’s 2.0

By RANDALL COLBURN

Michael Keane CHRO

P.F. Chang’s Scottsdale, AZ

Day in and day out, you make a difference

Michael Keane likes to stay on his toes. During his more than twenty-five years in human resources, he’s often found himself drawn to companies that he describes as challenged— whether that’s in terms of operations or a transition. “I put myself on that path to try different industries and experiences,” he says. “I made the choice to go into ambiguity and uncertainty, and that’s been a consistent theme for me, by and large, for the last twenty years.”

He’s not kidding. After kicking off his career at appliance giant Whirlpool, Keane uprooted his life in southwestern Michigan and moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he cut his teeth at Borden Foods before transitioning into retail. The following years found him climbing the ranks of companies such as Limited, Victoria’s Secret, and Tween Brands. Feeling ready for another big change, he switched both cities and industries to accept the role of chief human resources officer for P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Like several of Keane’s previous employers, P.F. Chang’s is a company that is very much in transition. Of the restaurant chain’s top nine leaders, only one has worked there for more than two years. Although P.F. Chang’s is still successfully operating more than two hundred restaurants in forty states, Keane admits that the business has been, for a protracted period of time, in some decline. As always, though, he’s optimistic. “This management team has to change that,” he says. “The first step to moving in a different direction is to change the expectations.”

Clarifying expectations is just one aspect of P.F. Chang’s culture that Keane and the leadership team hope to cultivate. “Culture is what your leaders do,” he says. “So, whatever you write, whatever you proclaim your culture to be, the reality of that is borne out by what your leaders actually do.” Cultivating a consistent workplace culture is not only one of Keane’s specialties as an HR professional, but it’s also a large part of his day-to-day. He says that up to 70 percent of his workload is dedicated to that endeavor.

“The best cultures in any organization are really clear about not only what the culture is, but how they’re supposed to behave within it,” he says. And while Keane says

FOOD FACTS

212

P.F. Chang’s restaurants in the United States

76

P.F. Chang’s franchises outside of the United States

12

Countries in which P.F. Chang’s has franchises and restaurants

that P.F. Chang’s is still early in establishing that culture, he’s able to articulate it clearly.

Everything about the culture ties to the philosophy of servant leadership, a phrase culled from a 1970 essay by Robert K. Greenleaf that essentially values a community-based approach rather than a pyramid-like, top-down structure. “The model here is centered around what we do to make it easier for our operators to do the business—period,” Keane says.

In this environment, Keane speaks of leaders who are focused on helping their teams be more effective through vehicles like getting better plans, not just for the operators and employees of the company’s restaurants but also for its executive staff. “There must be at least one thing that every person in the company, myself included, needs to get better at,” he says. “Not eight things you need to get better on, but the one or two things. We strive to create clarity on that. That’s’ a huge part of the support model we’re going for.”

According to Keane, servant leadership is made up of four clear culture components. High expectations is the first component, and Keane notes that the company has had to recast what those expectations are in the wake of its new leadership. The second is high accountability. “When you talk about a problem, start with yourself,” he says. “You start with what you didn’t do and what you should’ve done differently.”

High challenge is the third component. “Once we clear a hurdle, we need to find the next one because if we’re not getting better on our terms, one of our competitors is going to make us get better on their terms,” he says. “And that’s not acceptable.”

The key to P.F. Chang’s reinvigorated culture, however, rests in service leadership’s final culture component. In Keane’s opinion, support is what creates the most sustainability. This is where his role in HR is most focused. “It’s about building muscle,” Keane says. “It’s about what we are doing to build

the muscle of our people in terms of their capacity to do more and be better, their capacity to be their best.”

Even more so than in retail, support is key to the restaurant industry. Keane says industry-wide turnover hovers around 75 percent, which has caused him to put much more thought into hourly workforce issues than he did in his previous positions. For a wok cook at P.F. Chang’s, the training program runs for ten weeks, which he says is much more intensive than most jobs you’d find in retail or even in most restaurants. That requires a real level of investment in the business, which is exactly what Keane and his team are trying to drive for their employees.

“What we’re asking the operators to do, from a cultural standpoint, is to act like owners,” he says. “You own it, so you pay maniacal attention to detail, and you have a high, high, high sense of accountability, first to your team members and then to your guests.”

Sure, that sounds intense, but Keane says that if the company supports people in their ability to be clear about what’s important to them, then those people will invest. This requires feedback along the way, as well as treating team members with respect. “That’s how you create a very virtuous cycle,” he says. “That’s what support means.”

Keane sees a bright future for P.F. Chang’s. The restaurant chain hopes to open up to another one hundred restaurants in the United States, as well as to expand its operations overseas, where leadership sees a lot of potential in terms of business and insight. “Our goal is basically P.F. Chang’s 2.0, if you will,” Keane says. “That demands change.” Like Keane has done his entire career, P.F. Chang’s will have to stay on its toes.

From Microsoft to Memphis

Alex Smith left the private sector to address HR challenges for the City of Memphis

By JEFF SILVER

AAfter the victory celebrations and concession speeches have faded away, a newly elected administration has a lot of work to do. That includes learning how to work with existing systems and infrastructure to govern effectively.

In 2016, Alex Smith became the chief human resources officer for the City of Memphis, working for Mayor Jim Strickland. Smith had to determine not only how to support Strickland’s vision for governing, but also how to assess the city’s personnel issues, priorities, and potential solutions.

Through focus groups, town hall meetings, and engagement surveys, Smith discovered that she was facing longstanding employee morale and engagement challenges. “The most important goal was to revise city government and create a new culture,” Smith says. “To come up with effective solutions, we had to have an ongoing factfinding conversation so we could understand employees’ points of view.”

That conversation revealed career development and benefit policies as being prime sources of employee dissatisfaction. But Smith was also faced with two city-wide objectives: attracting and retaining public safety professionals and enabling employees to “be brilliant at the basics” in their jobs. After ten months, she was able to launch numerous initiatives to address all of those concerns.

Focus on professional development led to the creation of learning tracks to help individuals grow as managers and leaders. As a part of the city’s Professional Development Institute, programs are now in place that leverage social media and other technologies to provide greater visibility of employment opportunities at all levels.

Smith also consolidated recruitment, talent development, and promotional testing in the newly created Talent Management office. This has allowed for innovative programs like Blue Path, which works with high school seniors interested in law enforcement. The program pays for their associate degree and offers training to become police service technicians.

Benefits issues have also been addressed through streamlined processes for open enrollment and benefits counselors who provide advice on making the best coverage decisions and navigating the automated system. One of Smith’s ongoing challenges is ensuring that compensation and benefits are competitive with other municipalities, as well as the private sector.

“All cities are having to make tough decisions about pension liability and healthcare choices, but since we expect the best from our employees, we want to provide them with the best possible benefits,” Smith says.

Pertaining to the “be brilliant at the basics” objective, Smith explains that setting clear expectations enables employees to be accountable for meeting and exceeding them. Managers now provide quarterly feedback on key goals, opportunities for improvement, and rewards and recognition for exemplary performances. For example, the

Alex Smith CHRO

City of Memphis Memphis, TN

Ovation Awards—a city-wide recognition ceremony—has been rebranded and relaunched to highlight employee innovation, collaboration, and customer service. “Whether you’re a police officer, financial analyst, or sanitation worker, we want you to be rewarded for doing your best to serve the citizens of Memphis,” Smith says.

In addition to addressing employee concerns, Smith has also changed some internal structures and improved interdepartmental collaboration. Americorps Vista has been moved from the executive division to HR, which enables HR to directly coordinate and partner with multiple nonprofit agencies outside of city government. HR has also partnered with the Community Affairs Division and the Workforce Investment Network to create a public workshop to help residents develop an effective résumé and position themselves for a successful job search.

“The workshop was the first time three city divisions collaborated to provide service to our citizens,” Smith explains. “It was an amazing opportunity because, even with our internal focus, HR has a lot of knowledge we can offer the community.”

Smith came to city government from Microsoft, with experience working with Blacks at Microsoft, the company’s oldest employee resource group, as well as special initiatives like the National Immigration Spouse Network, which assists families going through the green card process for permanent US residency. She also grew up in a family that was active in public service, and, as a girl, she frequently accompanied her grandfather to city council meetings in Gary, Indiana.

“My professional path started in the private sector, but public service was instilled in me from a young age,” Smith says. “I was always looking for opportunities to serve.”

Looking forward, Smith plans to position HR liaisons as coaches and advisors to city leadership. She has already created the HR Information Services team to aggregate and integrate data. This team will use analytics to better understand employees and ongoing issues, as well as to proactively develop innovative solutions using predictive business intelligence. Smith has also launched a Diversity and Inclusion office to build strategies and comprehensive training for senior leadership.

“I love my job and the HR team that does amazing work serving the city,” Smith says. “Along with the mayor, who is very supportive of our initiatives, they all help make my job just a little bit easier.”

Embrace Change and Lead with It

Thanks to a passion for keeping up with changing technology, Bill Fowles and his team have transformed the way global technology leader ABB recruits top talent

By ADAM KIVEL

Although ABB is a global leader in electrification, robotics, and industrial automation, it wasn’t long ago that the company was collecting applicants’ résumés by hand. Attracting the top candidates with cutting-edge skills and knowledge is one thing, but managing the flow of talent, finding the best applicants, and bringing them on board—all by sifting through boxes of paperwork—is a titanic challenge. The solution came by turning to technology, and ABB has been reaping the rewards.

A major part of the drive toward technology-based recruiting was bringing aboard Bill Fowles, who joined ABB as one of its US-based talent acquisition managers in 2013. From the start, he led the charge in a technology-first approach, which focused on more mobile-friendly and digital talent tools.

“I knew that our team was going to start collecting thousands of new leads and talent pipelines, and if we didn’t house them or store them properly, all of that would go for naught,” he explains.

Fowles came to ABB with more than twenty years of experience in talent acquisition, working with Fortune 500 companies including Honeywell, Cisco, and IBM. ABB’s global reach had room to grow in terms of talent acquisition and recruitment, especially in the US market. The opportunity to leverage his experience to drive awareness of the organization’s brand was an irresistible challenge, especially when paired with the opportunity to implement new technology-driven solutions.

“We’re in a mobile world, and if your company isn’t able to connect and message consistently, candidates will go to companies that do connect,” Fowles says. “So, we began to leverage our digital capabilities, and we’ve become more agile and fluid.”

RECRUITING WITH A PROACTIVE APPROACH

One of the most important steps in this transition was Fowles’s partnership with Avature. Thanks to Avature’s global candidate relationship management (CRM) tool, ABB was able to bring candidates’ potential to life, rather than leaving their paper résumés buried in files. “A strong CRM tool can consistently message and bring to light those candidates that possibly may have been overlooked,” he says.

In a sense, ABB now has the capability to see the journey from source to hire all within a single tool. Fowles and his team are able to sort a massive number of résumés and select candidates based on things like a particular skill or certification. They can also access the information of a candidate at a California-based military event from their Cary, North Carolina, office, all in real time.

To that end, Fowles has instituted a more proactive approach to recruitment at ABB. In a world where a majority of individuals are receptive to new opportunities, as some studies have suggested, a proactive philosophy can make an amazing impact. Competition is high, and any edge in recruitment can make the difference between success and stagnation.

Although ABB relied external recruitment agencies in the past, Fowles and his team have been able to produce real traction and

properly measure that success. ABB not only saw a reduction in cost in its recruiting process, but it also improved in several key performance indicators, including quality of hire, employer branding, and time-tofill. The latter of those is especially important in the engineering world. “Average time-to-fill within engineering can be anywhere from, say, sixty-five to seventy-five days,” Fowles explains. “We’ve been able to reduce that closer to sixty days, and we’ve been holding that consistent over the last three and a half years.”

BUILDING BRAND RECOGNITION

In addition to adopting a CRM, Fowles and ABB entered the social media sphere to expand the company’s brand awareness, using employee testimonial videos in particular. “That was one of the strategies that we wanted to utilize to really show that our employees were brand ambassadors for ABB here in this region,” Fowles explains.

The results from that social media push have been staggering: in the three and a half years that Fowles and his team have spent on the project, their number of global LinkedIn followers has grown more than tenfold, from seventy thousand to eight hundred thousand, and their videos have amassed over twenty thousand views to date. Meanwhile, employee involvement in the testimonials and social media push has only improved the morale at ABB.

More than a tool in his repertoire, Fowles feels that Avature’s products offered ABB a completely new perspective on talent recruitment. “It’s essential,” he says. “If you’re going to create a global, mobile, fluid talent organization, you have to have the right tools in place to be able to not only stay up with the times, but to also measure your success.”

But, the process wasn’t without its challenges. ABB doesn’t sell consumer products, so building brand awareness was difficult in its very nature. On the other hand, the organization works to get power and automation into homes and communities safely and reliably—a very compelling message. Learning to bridge that gap was important for Fowles. “If you’re not an engineer, you may not be aware of any ABB products,” he says. “More and more of our employees are seeing the opportunity to share stories and really get more involved in social media, which has really made the difference.”

CREATING A DIVERSE TEAM

For ABB, that difference includes a drive for diversity, and the recruitment team has developed programs specifically aimed at candidate diversity, as well as improved outreach for candidates that otherwise may be overlooked, such as military veterans, individuals with disabilities, and university students. “We attend events of the Society of Women Engineers, the National Society of Black Engineers, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers,” Fowles explains. “We have engaged with a local vendor, Enable America, who has really helped us to create some outreach into other important channels and talent pipelines as well.” He also emphasizes that it’s been a team effort. Everyone on the US team has come together with global partners to emphasize ABB’s commitment to diversity.

When ABB team members are actually out in the field at these events, Avature’s CRM tools allow them to bring along a tablet

computer and gather candidates’ information easily. This information can then also be made available immediately at ABB offices worldwide, as well as easily and conveniently store information.

“Now, we’re able to see how we did from an event three years ago, which is something that only a CRM tool would allow us to do,” Fowles explains. The organization has had some immediate hires from these events. It even hired one individual who the team had met at an event two years prior because that candidate stayed on ABB’s radar thanks to the CRM. These results are important for explaining the success of this approach to those in other departments. It’s difficult to measure the improvement in a vacuum, but actually having statistics from the CRM to prove the success of this new approach makes it clear.

CONTINUING TO INNOVATE

Fowles is also quick to note that while the team has made impressive strides, that improvement

is constantly at the front of their minds. “ABB is a company that really prides itself in its continuous improvement,” he explains. “We’re a company known for our innovation, so this journey that we’re on today is not over. We’re continuing to look at how we can improve, as well as how we can share our best practices across the globe.”

He’s already seen that international spread, receiving calls from ABB offices ranging from Canada to Sweden looking for demos on the CRM tool and information on technology-focused approaches. In fact, being able to rapidly adapt to the changing world and share successes with his team is key to ABB’s success and Fowles’s leadership approach.

“We live in a world today that’s constantly changing, and if your company doesn’t have a philosophy of embracing change and really looking at a continuous improvement mentality, you could easily be left behind,” he explains. “That’s always been my leadership style: to embrace change and to lead with it.”

“Avature is essential. If you’re going to create a global, mobile, fluid talent organization, you have to have the right tools in place to be able to not only stay up with the times, but also to be able to measure your success.”

BILL FOWLES

Bill Fowles

Talent Acquisition Manager

ABB Cary, NC

How Its Tax Team Helps SunEdison’s Innovations Shine

Chief tax officer James McNeill’s work touches virtually everything the renewable energy company does—and so do his former reports

By RUSS KLETTKE

Chief tax officer James McNeill’s work at SunEdison bears a similarity to the actual sun, casting light and heat on our planet, hitting the earth on all sides at different angles and at different times. The same thing can be said about tax considerations and the company that they envelop.

Some of those tax issues are beneficial. Others are a costly encumbrance. To SunEdison—with manufacturing, development, and operations in thirty-five countries—there are myriad tax, duty, tariff, and surcharge questions to be dealt with, which is McNeill’s job. As he explains it, there are some that affect customer markets, such as favorable tax incentives that vary by state and country. However, other tax issues are operationally strategic; they can affect the intercompany selling of parts and systems and charging affiliates for services and other intangibles.

All of this hints at the give and take of how a business in the renewable energy sector must operate.

It also demonstrates how people in finance help drive renewable energy to compete against fossil fuels. McNeill’s staff has worked on five continents—Africa, North America, South America, Europe, and Asia—to manage these supply- and demand-related tax matters to the point of making solar energy affordable and profitable. “The economies of scale created by increasing demand of these systems has significantly reduced the cost per watt in many regions of the globe,” McNeill says. “In many regions, solar is at or below parity pricing with fossil fuel-based utilities.”

Transfer pricing is at the core of reducing transactional costs. For example, one SunEdison company in

James McNeill Chief Tax Officer SunEdison Maryland Heights, MO

Malaysia purchases tangibles (e.g., polysilicon solar ingot) from a SunEdison-owned manufacturing plant in Portland, Oregon. The ingot is converted into solar wafers used in SunEdison solar systems throughout the globe. Tax regulators in all these countries want to make sure that these transactions yield the greatest revenues for their respective countries, subjecting SunEdison and the tax department to close scrutiny as a matter of course.

“Generally, intercompany transfer prices must be at arm’s-length prices,” McNeill says, explaining how those would be comparable to pricing between unrelated parties. “In order to document that the prices are arm’s length, economic studies that comply with local country guidelines must be performed. This process requires close coordination between various finance functions and other operations within the company.”

A few other tax matters have a big effect on the enterprise. A major manufacturing site for SunEdison is in Portland, Oregon, where the company was lured with renewable energy incentives. In California, Section 73 in the Revenue and Taxation Code favorably excludes the value of a photovoltaic cell installation from property tax assessments, reduces residential and commercial property tax on new solar installations, and stimulates purchases from SunEdison.

McNeill says he needs exceptionally qualified people to manage the breadth of how taxation affects their business. “My people are extremely smart,” he says. “They need to understand the technical interrelationships of international and domestic taxation, which have so many moving parts.”

That means going beyond just doing the research. “In an audit, they have to have various complex algorithms that affect cash and effective tax rates hardwired in their heads,” he says. “We have to immediately recognize the effect of proposed adjustments while in the meeting.”

So how does someone like McNeill cultivate the kind of tax finance experts able to do this?

McNeill’s philosophy is to attract the very highest caliber professionals and then use their networks to locate new talent. Retention obviously matters as well, something McNeill ties directly to company success. That means providing his people with the opportunity to develop and grow.

“Once talent within the tax department has been identified, a development plan is created to deploy them elsewhere in the company, if that is their desire,” he says.

“It would be shortsighted for the tax department to silo our professionals. . . . All functions should cross-pollinate with other functions.”

JAMES MCNEILL

What Makes Us A Top 100 Firm?

As evidence of how that works, he mentions the company’s general counsel and chief of staff, both of whom rose through the SunEdison ranks from their start in the tax department. “Both could have replaced me at some point, but promotional opportunities arose elsewhere in an area of interest,” McNeill says.

To underscore this point, McNeill describes how what people learn in the tax department is foundationally useful for their aspirations to move around and up. “Transfer pricing requires tax staff to understand the economics of transactions,” he says. “This helps them understand the business as well as people in operations. Tax is a pipeline for leadership positions.”

But McNeill doesn’t regret letting go of talented performers to work in other areas of the company. “It would be shortsighted for the tax department to silo our professionals if they are qualified for leadership roles outside tax,” he says. “All functions should crosspollinate with other functions.”

That all sounds a lot like putting out energy in all directions, just like the sun.

“Jim’s deep tax knowledge elevates the work he does at SunEdison to more than a compliance function. He’s a great leader, resolute and proactive—critical attributes to have in challenging and uncertain times.”

—Marty Doerr, Partner in Charge, Tax Services at Brown Smith Wallace

Strong competency in serving our core middle market clients and specialty expertise in Property Tax, International Tax, Health Care, Insurance Consulting, Cybersecurity and Construction Audit, for starters. But most importantly, our clients.

That’s

why we are proud to work with SunEdison and congratulate Jim McNeill, Chief Tax Officer, for being recognized for his distinguished accomplishments.

Capital Humans

At PIMCO, investing is as much about the talent and team as it is about the dollars they manage— especially for global general counsel David Flattum

BY AMANDA GARCIA

Strip away all the dollars, cents, and decimals from the financial management industry, and what’s left is the same thing that’s at the heart of any successful organization: people. As managing director and global general counsel for PIMCO, David Flattum is committed to identifying dynamic people, investing in their individual careers, pulling them together to create an outstanding legal team, and regularly demonstrating how valued and appreciated they are.

Leading PIMCO’s legal department requires a unique approach, not only because it’s small in comparison to others in the industry, but also because it is exclusively staffed with highperforming, highly experienced attorneys. Most junior-level tasks are outsourced to allow the in-house team to be directly and immediately involved in any business issues as they arise. This means that many talented people are always at the ready to provide solutions in high-stress situations.

“They are highly motivated with wonderful credentials, which means I need to work hard to keep them,” Flattum says. “I love identifying talent—people with a passion for what we do and are accomplished in their areas of expertise. Once we have them, its important to challenge them with interesting work.”

Flattum fosters autonomy by allowing his team leaders to take calculated risk without his micromanagement, ensuring they have the necessary resources, and supporting their decisions. “My experience is that talented people are driven by the opportunity to achieve something,” he says. “That, and relationships.”

Naturally, the human side of anything must include relationships, and financial management is no exception. Flattum says that if he creates a team environment, supplies great work, and sets high expectations, people will enjoy their work and grow. A healthy, growing team will also collaborate to identify others who share their values and quality of skill, and that breeds a culture of excellent people working together to continue the cycle of growth and development. “At PIMCO, all that leads to an in-house level of

DAVID FLATTUM

MANAGING

DIRECTOR, GLOBAL GENERAL COUNSEL

PIMCO

NEWPORT BEACH, CA

Congratulations to David Flattum of PIMCO for being featured in Profile magazine

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is a premier law firm with market-leading practices and a global perspective. We deliver effective solutions to our clients’ most important legal challenges, applying clear commercial judgment and a distinctively collaborative approach.

New

Washington, D.C.

London

“Stagnation of development often results in frustration and unhappiness.”

DAVID FLATTUM

sophistication and quality that you would normally only find at a major law firm,” Flattum says.

As important as enthusiasm and consistency of quality are at PIMCO, diversity of thought and background are equally valued. This commitment to diversity is company-wide and stems from an understanding that better outcomes and decisions are made by teams that are intentionally inclusive of a wide variety of viewpoints. “For us, race, gender, and sexual orientation are important factors in diversity,” Flattum says. “But we also like to think beyond them and take into account culture, geography, background, and other points of difference.”

Not only that, the company in general, and the legal team specifically, operates under the conviction that inviting a variety of perspectives to the table is simply the right way to do business.

“I’m proud to note that our legal/compliance department is one of the more diverse elements of PIMCO,” Flattum says. “That requires intentionality, especially in the financial management world.”

Thanks to PIMCO’s reputation for successfully working on the cutting edge of the industry, the firm is a place where all kinds of people want to work.

Diversity of talent on the legal team has also helped to feed a culture of inclusion, as well as diversity of perspectives and approaches. By giving the legal team more autonomy, Flattum has allowed them to work in a variety of ways, and he says there’s nothing better than when excellent people are encouraged to use diverse ways of working together. The results not only benefit the firm, but they also, more importantly, benefit PIMCO’s clients.

In his role as global general counsel, Flattum is serious about the intentionality required to build and nurture a diverse team and the individuals who constitute it. He regularly engages in

Director

See around corners

Ever-changing market dynamics, technologies and regulations can obscure the path forward.

Our tax professionals can work with you to define that path. They can help you with strategies to manage your tax issues by recommending solutions that are consistent with your company’s overall business objectives.

To see how we can help you, please contact:

Thomas Boniface Partner, Tax thomas.boniface@pwc.com

one-on-one conversations with direct reports and dedicates time to talking about their career goals and practical steps to reach them. Each of his direct reports then meets with their direct reports, so everyone in the legal department is working with their supervisor to create and update a personal development plan each year. Flattum believes stagnation is the source of unhappiness and frustration, which is why he is committed to helping his team identify their unique goals and stay focused enough to attain them.

The legal team at PIMCO has been anything but stagnant in the ten years that Flattum has been there. Between the financial crisis of 2008 and significant changes in leadership at PIMCO—not to mention their own personal growth and development—members of the legal team have experienced an impressive amount of movement. Flattum has endless stories of his team’s over-the-top dedication, clever ideas, and successful solutions to surprising challenges. However, one in particular stands out.

A few years ago, PIMCO’s founder and manager of PIMCO’s Total Return Fund left the firm. As soon as the news hit, stakeholders reacted with uncertainty and anxiety, policy-makers in Washington started asking difficult questions, and clients withdrew large amounts of money from the fund. Suddenly, the legal team was expected to mobilize to undergird PIMCO’s portfolio management group while juggling supporting all other areas, too.

Even under extreme pressure, the PIMCO team rose to the occasion by providing strong, timely advice and working 24-7 to ensure trade volumes, legal issues, and jurisdictions around the world were supported. “The work they did was close to flawless,” Flattum recalls. “The outcome that the firm achieved was fantastic. It was not the achievement of any one person but of an incredibly talented team.” Questions were addressed with skill, accuracy, and timeliness, and everyone worked under great pressure and performed outstandingly well.

Flattum’s pride in his team is as evident as his passion for his work and his company. PIMCO is a firm that is dedicated to delivering the best outcome for its clients and committed to its relationships both internal and external. And, at the end of the day, it prioritizes people above all else. Here, there’s an emphasis on team building, training, and diversity, and the results are demonstrated by the talented, enthusiastic, and courageous human capital of the dedicated legal team and its fearless leader.

“WE VALUE THE PARTNERSHIP WE HAVE ESTABLISHED WITH DAVID FLATTUM AND THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE PIMCO TEAM. IT IS A PRIVILEGE TO ASSIST THEM ON A WIDE RANGE OF LEGAL MATTERS, AND TO HELP THEM ENHANCE PIMCO’S STANDING AS ONE OF THE WORLD’S PREEMINENT ASSET MANAGEMENT FIRMS.”

—DAVID SULLIVAN, MICHAEL DOHERTY,

PARTNERS, ROPES & GRAY

DEBEVOISE APPLAUDS DAVID FLATTUM FOR HIS VISION AND TREMENDOUS SUCCESS AS MANAGING DIRECTOR AND GENERAL COUNSEL AT PIMCO. WE ARE PROUD TO HAVE WORKED CLOSELY WITH DAVID AND HIS OUTSTANDING TEAM, AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO CONTINUING OUR RELATIONSHIP FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.

The Winding Road to Happy Hospitality

For Omni Hotels & Resorts’ Joy Rothschild, loving both her day-to-day work

and her employer is better the second time around

By KELLI LAWRENCE

The path that led to Joy Rothschild’s longstanding career with Omni Hotels & Resorts resembles the winding plot of a romantic comedy, if the relationship were between Rothschild and her job instead of between, say, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, especially when considering the story’s highlights.

As an enthusiastic college graduate and newcomer to the hospitality industry, Rothschild was flattered to be chosen as the first female maître d’ for a posh New Orleans restaurant. She was, however, quickly dismayed by the hazing she had to endure from her male counterparts. At a pay phone a few weeks later, following a particularly grueling evening involving a dead rat in the restaurant fountain, Rothschild desperately checked on other employment opportunities. She secured a job with Dunfey Hotel (now Omni) and worked her way up to senior vice president of human resources. Omni was then purchased by TRT Holdings Inc., a privately owned, Texas-based diversified holding company

eighteen years later, and TRT representatives immediately started restructuring and laying off dozens of Omni staff, including Rothschild. Rothschild then did some soul-searching while juggling a new husband and child, and she eventually found a new job with Carnival Hotels & Resorts, an affiliate of Carnival Cruise Lines. Two years later, Omni reached out to Rothschild and confessed the error of its ways in an effort to win her back. Rothschild accepted Omni’s new offer, and she found a company ready to embrace and evolve its culture. The result was a relationship—which Rothschild describes as a love affair—that has endured nearly two decades. This true-life tale was fueled, in its formative days, not by Rothschild’s previous experience, but by her commitment and dedication.

“It was because of my attitude that I moved up quickly wherever I worked,”

Joy Rothschild CHRO

Omni Hotels & Resorts

Dallas, TX

Joy Rothschild is a member of the Society for HR Management and the AH&LA Labor Council.

“The most important thing I do every day is champion our culture. We’ve created something very special here.”

JOY ROTHSCHILD

she says. “I’ve embraced that philosophy now with other people in my career.”

Today, Omni places an emphasis on recruiting, especially people with uplifting attitudes. The company began focusing on customer and employee satisfaction with the TRT Holdings acquisition nearly twenty years ago. Rothschild was in on the ground level of this particular brand of company renaissance, and she has remained steadfastly passionate about its importance. “The most important thing I do every day is champion our culture,” she says. “We’ve created something very special here.”

A centerpiece of that culture is a series of initiatives such as Omni Circle for Associates in Need. Launched in 2005 as a way to help Omni’s New Orleans employees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Omni Circle allocates grant money to associates enduring major hardships. From assistance after a house fire to airfare for an employee’s child living overseas, the program supports Omni team members in a multitude of ways. “It’s our owner’s favorite cultural initiative we have,” Rothschild says. “It allows us to reach out and help out people who really need it.”

Meanwhile, on the national level, Omni has had great success with its Say Goodnight to Hunger program. By booking a room

directly on OmniHotels.com, rather than through a travel website, Omni provides a family of four with dinner for a week. As of December 2016, Omni has donated nearly five million dinners, with the organization planning for a total of 18.2 million annually. To meet that goal, the company decided to expand its efforts. Now, more than 3,700 associates have volunteered almost 5,000 hours of their own time to the hunger cause.

“We made it a company cause,” Rothschild says. “We challenged our hotels to support their local food banks, pantries, and markets, and they’ve really embraced this feel-good issue. There’s nothing else we do that’s the magnitude of Say Goodnight to Hunger. It’s been a great community partnership. We’ve teamed up with schools and done all sorts of projects, but this is our biggest initiative as a company that touches all the prongs.”

Initiatives happen on the local level as well. One spearheaded by Rothschild’s team was aimed at helping food insecure children from Dallas, where Omni is based. Backpacks for Kids is an initiative whereby underprivileged school children bring a backpack to their school office on a Friday and take it home filled with nutritious food for the weekend. Each bag costs $5 to fill, so the Omni corporate office offered its staff the opportunity to wear jeans to work—as long as they made $5 donations.

“We raised $6,000, enough to fill 1,200 backpacks,” Rothschild says. “I was stunned at the way people rallied around this program.”

The associates reap benefits from Omni’s efforts, too. In addition to the aforementioned Omni Circle, the organization commemorated their twentieth anniversary by recognizing people with tenure of five years or more with loyalty bonuses. Rothschild coordinated efforts to make this happen, including calling all the heads of the various unions involved with their employees. Omni also has a longstanding policy of helping with funeral expenses and other details when an associate passes away.

“It’s a simple way to put your arms around people that doesn’t cost a lot of money,” she says. “These people are a part of our family, and it’s not just at work. We’re taking care of eighteen thousand individuals’ livelihoods, and we need to take that very seriously.”

You Can’t Escape the Law

Leslie Rohrbacker transitioned from her legal career to HR, only to return to the law as chief human resources officer at one of the largest law firms in the world

Words by JEFF SILVER

by KRISTIN DEITRICH

Photos

SSpecializing in immigration services for corporate and individual clients, Fragomen Worldwide is one of the largest law firms in the world, with 3,500 employees and nearly fifty offices in twenty countries. That presents unique challenges for its chief human resources officer, Leslie Rohrbacker. Luckily for Fragomen, she is an unusual chief human resources officer.

Rohrbacker spent the first eleven years of her career as a successful litigator, but she was dissatisfied with the lack of leadership training and professional development at most firms. Interestingly, after moving to an in-house position with The Medicines Company, a global pharmaceutical company, the CEO asked if she would be interested in transitioning to HR. Rohrbacker mulled over the proposition while traveling overseas for the company.

“I was struck by how everyone shared a passion for what they were doing to make the company successful, even in remote locations,” she recalls. “I felt energized by the possibility of being responsible for such a diverse group of employees and focusing on unifying them as one organizational culture.”

When Rohrbacker came to Fragomen four years ago, being an attorney gave her instant credibility and insight into how attorneys think. She describes them as being highly analytical and says they systematically assess information to identify strengths and weaknesses. While that mind-set is very helpful in prioritizing and presenting information, Rohrbacker herself had to learn to let go of a litigator’s competitiveness and desire to win. She learned to build consensus by “helping people onto the bus, not pushing them on.”

“Even if you’re right on the merits, you can lose by winning, especially if you don’t bring people around to your position and buy in as early as possible,” she explains. “Instead of feeling like settling or losing, consensus should feel like everyone came to the table and shared their priorities and interests to create a positive final product.”

With some of the world’s largest and most successful companies as clients, Fragomen faces the unique challenge of having its clients expect an extraordinarily high level of service. In fact, service level agreements often require that contact be made with individual client employees or their HR representatives within twenty-four hours to initiate a case. Attorneys and paraprofessionals must also know what approach to take and the information needed to begin processing immediately upon contact. And that applies to hundreds of thousands of cases annually.

Leslie Rohrbacker CHRO

Fragomen Worldwide New York, NY

As your trusted advisor, we help you anticipate and understand emerging legal issues to achieve your business goals. For more than 40 years, we have been providing legal counsel in health care and life sciences, employment, labor & workforce management and litigation. Our industry focus in health care, financial services, hospitality, retail, and technology, among others, enables us to respond to your needs promptly, allowing you to rest easy.

“Even if you’re right on the merits, you can lose by winning, especially if you don’t bring people around to your position and have buy-in as early as possible.”

LESLIE ROHRBACKER

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Even with that intense pressure to perform, the HR department has been highly successful at aligning what Rohrbacker calls the employees’ “line of sight” with the firm’s mission, core values, and strategic objectives. Fragomen’s offices may span many borders and cultures, but a 2015 employee survey indicated that alignment was one of the highest scoring areas.

“People come in with different experiences and backgrounds, but if your mission and core values are clear enough, you can absolutely have everyone facing the same direction, Rohrbacker says. Our leadership and frontline managers have done a great job of communicating that fastidious client service is at the core of what we do.”

In addition to its widespread geographic and physical presence, Fragomen also boasts an extraordinarily diverse workforce. It is routinely ranked as the first or second global firm for the diversity of its partnership. Its executive committee, for example, is onethird female, and two-thirds of that group is Latina. Half of the firm is also female.

Rohrbacker, who has always been passionate about diversity (in fifth grade she rewrote the Declaration of Independence to create a declaration of women’s rights), believes that the extent of inclusion at the firm is an important key to its success and sustainability.

“Our diversity of cultures, race, gender, and thought creates a very powerful, unifying force that also happens to produce very high employee engagement,” she says.

“We recognized a long time ago that you need a mix of people and perspectives at the table to remain successful.”

Considering the firm’s operations are so vast, Rohrbacker works closely with the process improvement and standards group to streamline processes and help teams work smarter and more efficiently. She also has the opportunity to work on the training and development she missed in the early part of her career. HR develops highly customized and targeted content to provide bite-sized video instruction, spot coaching, and development programs.

“We embrace the opportunity to create two-way relationships with our employees that prepare them for leadership roles with bespoke soft skills training,” Rohrbacker points out.

She also recognizes that she has come full circle over the course of her career. “I started in law firms where I felt stifled in development and have ended up being head of an HR department that creates customized development programs,” she says. “It’s a privilege to work for a firm that supports such an innovative approach.”

Epstein Becker Green congratulates Leslie Rohrbacker. Working with talented and thoughtful HR leaders like this lets us enjoy fulfilling our motto Your Workplace. Our Business. www.ebglaw.com/employment-labor-workforcemanagement/

EFFECT

Business With a Conscience

Dorri McWhorter, chief executive officer of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, joined the nonprofit after excelling in the private sector. She believes—and works to prove—that positive change can and should start in the business community.

Words

by MARY KENNEY Photos by KRISTIN DEITRICH

Some of what Dorri McWhorter, CEO of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, says might surprise you. Here’s a piece of wisdom for example: “Don’t take other people’s advice.” Here’s another:

“Anyone can make a better human experience in whatever work they already do.”

However, what might be most surprising is her take on the private sector. Yes, McWhorter is active in Chicago’s civic and philanthropic communities. However, before joining YWCA, she was a partner at the accounting firm Crowe Horwath. She’s even won many awards for her business career: the Athena International’s Young Professional Leadership Award (2010), Chicago Business Leader of Color (2009 honoree), Diversity MBA Magazine’s Top 100 Under 50 Executive Leaders (2009 recipient), and the Illinois CPA Society’s Outstanding Leadership in Advancing Diversity Award (2010). Her positive experience in the private sector now reflects her work with the YWCA.

McWhorter thinks that for-profit businesses such as Coca-Cola actually do a lot of good in the world, and that nonprofits should better align with these private-sector businesses. At the end of the day, she thinks it’s truly about doing good for your community, and that can be done from any position.

What motivates you in your work, both at the YWCA and throughout your career?

I sound like Miss America, but I really want to improve the world. I’m motivated by the opportunity to leverage business to make a better society. I’ve always been a consultant; I was a CPA originally. I’ve seen and participated in ways we can use business to make a better, more advanced society and world. For me, joining the YWCA was the best place to do that.

Equality and empowering women is very important to me, and not because that’s the gender I identify with. Statistically speaking, it’s demonstrated that 96 percent of women’s income is spent on education and health, things that make a difference to families and communities. Equal opportunity and economic empowerment for women leads to stronger communities. At the YWCA, we focus on safety, wellness, training, and economic sustainability—all things that create a better world.

Why do you think it’s important to focus on communities and not just take a big-picture view?

Everyone is in a community. You operate on a community level because that’s where you can cause change and make a true connection. You start at the ground level and build your way up.

You worked to create YShop, an online store where a portion of each purchase goes to benefit the YWCA and the communities they support. Why did you decide to create it?

First of all, the YWCA is 140 years old. Since the economy is driven by consumer behavior, we wanted a way to reach our constituents—donors as well as those benefiting from our services. YShop was a way to foster digital engagement. Our constituents engage with us, and we provide a

Dorri McWhorter CEO

Chicago, IL

service to small businesses. We partner with women- and minority-owned businesses, and create opportunities for them. Our constituents are very excited about this platform. It’s dual-purpose, and it allows smaller businesses to market themselves in ways they couldn’t before.

You also worked to create the Women’s Health Exchange, which empowers women in caring for their mental and physical health. What was the impetus behind that? The Affordable Care Act is now the law of the land. But in Illinois, only 39 percent of those eligible were getting health insurance. We realized there must be a reason for it. We have certified enrollment counselors at the YWCA, so we can help people get insurance. However, we couldn’t provide advice on how to make the best choice of coverage and insurer for you or your family’s needs. There are so many options. We wanted our site to be a portal to information and access so you could make more informed

decisions by working with associations, experts in certain types of care, and more.

You’ve worked with the YWCA for a while now, both on new projects and on providing consistent support and care. Are there unique challenges that the YWCA faces?

There is a challenge of evolving into a more sustainable business model. The YWCA has been in Chicago for a long time, but the economy and the world are changing. Funding has slowly dissipated from some of our traditional sources, and we’re finding new ways to fund ourselves now. Working with private-sector businesses and having them see us as a potential business partner has helped. They see how valuable we can be to their work.

What is your advice for other businesspeople who want to do the type of work you do?

Don’t take other people’s advice. This is very important to me. People believe you have to work in a nonprofit to do good. This is silly. If nonprofits are the only organizations doing good, what is the rest of the market doing? Not everyone can join a nonprofit; the sector couldn’t support that. So, we all have to do good wherever we are. Anyone can make a better human experience in whatever work they already do. Journalists do it through awareness, and businesses can do it through their services. Even when I was an accountant and a consultant, I looked at the experiences of my clients and how to improve those experiences. Helping people meet their career goals and do more for their families was how I made the world better.

I work at the YWCA because it tackles the kinds of issues I wanted to work on, but there are many businesses who have positively impacted the world. Coca-Cola, for example, has supported small-business owners around the world, particularly in impoverished areas, with its initiatives. Doing good needs to be integrated into the business model from day one. Not, “We’ll make our money and then give back later.” No. If we do it all along, we will create a stronger business, a stronger marketplace, and stronger communities.

I think people have lost sight of the fact that they can do good from wherever they are. We sometimes get caught up in, “What is good?” or “How good is good?” But there is so much we can do to make the world better.

YWCA Metropolitan Chicago

Engineering Communities

Smita Shah founded SPAAN Tech to address a gap in the market, but now she sees the company doing something much grander

By JONAS WEIR

FFrom an early age, Smita Shah knew she was going to pursue a career in math and science. The subjects were her natural strengths, and she loved that there was always a clear-cut answer. But she had no idea that her penchant for arithmetic would lead to founding her own engineering firm—SPAAN Tech—which does everything from design engineering to construction management to providing IT services and facilities and program management.

“At some point in my sophomore year of high school, I was trying to figure out, ‘If you’re good at math and good at science, what do you do?’” Shah says. “My dad, who’s an engineer said, ‘You become an engineer.’ I was like, ‘OK. That’s how it happens.’”

So, following in her civil engineer father’s footsteps, Shah went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Northwestern University, and then a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from MIT. She worked at renowned engineering firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill before going on to work with her father to negotiate a sixty-megawatt power project in India with Japanese financiers.

But in the late 1990s, Shah noticed an emerging market that she could cater to. She saw that companies needed people who knew not only technology but also engineering and infrastructure.

“At that time, most of the technology firms out there were performing IT setup and less infrastructure-related work,” Shah says. “I started the company to focus on infrastructure related to technology and then expanded into civil engineering.”

SPAAN Tech was born in 1998. The firm’s first challenge was finding clients, something that Shah had no experience doing. The other challenge was attracting top industry talent. Fortuitously, a big break for both challenges came from one project.

More than fifteen years ago, an engineering firm hired SPAAN to provide technology

upgrades to a project it was working on for electricity utility Commonwealth Edison. Shah and the SPAAN team executed the project to the highest level, and within six months, ComEd hired SPAAN directly and became the firm’s first major client.

Similarly, after having a great experience working with the firm, the former real estate director of ComEd was set to leave his position. He reached out to Shah to see if any opportunities might be available for him to join the SPAAN team. Of course, the answer was yes, and because he was well-respected in his field, he helped attract more top talent to the company—essentially forming the basis of SPAAN’s talent pipeline.

“We’re a firm that wants to have highly experienced, top-level talent who are motivated to succeed,” Shah says. “We deliver the highest-quality product, and we want people on our team who are committed to our culture of success. With that consistent approach, we’ve been able to attract incredible individuals who’ve helped build a cohesive and supportive work environment.”

The firm has grown from a small team to nearly fifty people, and many of the leadership roles are filled by women, which Shah sees as an added bonus, though it was not necessarily by design.

“We’ve added many women to my leadership team over the past few years,” Shah says. “My entire team is actually really diverse and led by a core group of talented men and women, all of whom add their own value to the work we do. It’s something that makes me very happy.”

Now that they’ve added more and more top talent, the firm is also tackling high-profile projects in the state of Illinois. Recently, the firm helped construct a new runway at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, the second busiest airport in the world, by leading the electrical engineering efforts in the joint project. SPAAN also helmed a project updating a bathroom at the Federal Building

“It was a simple project, very small, notable only for the user, but you take pride in every project you do.”

SMITA SHAH

GLOBETROTTERS

ARCHITECTS | ENGINEERS | CONSTRUCTION MANAGERS

Our vision is to be the preeminent team of planners, designers, and managers providing integrated solutions to advanced design technology issues. Our vision is about satisfying our clients’ needs by making them successful and building lifelong relationships one client at a time. This vision is just as relevant today as it was 40+ years ago.

O’Hare International Airport Terminal 5

Stroger Hospital

McCormick Place Extension

Smita Shah President, CEO

SPAAN Tech Chicago, IL

in Chicago that ended up being one of the firm’s more notable projects.

“It was a small senate bathroom, but it turned out to be the one used by Senator Barack Obama,” Shah says. “It was a simple project, very small, notable only for the user, but you take pride in every project you do.”

Despite working on some noteworthy projects in the Chicago area, where SPAAN is headquartered, Shah finds the more mundanesounding projects are more rewarding. At the end of the day, she sees SPAAN as less of an engineering firm and more of a company that connects communities.

“Infrastructure ends up being very personal,” she says. “We’re helping people go to work and to shop. We’re helping people fly to different places in an efficient way. We’re making communities livable.”

One project she points to was as simple as installing a streetlight. After the project, the area’s residents came up and thanked her personally. The streetlight made it safe for them to go out at night again.

Outside of SPAAN, Shah works to build community and make her hometown a better place to live. She is chairman of the President’s Council for the Museum of Science and Industry, and she’s on the boards of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, and After School Matters.

“I’ve always felt that it was very important to be engaged in the community,” Shah says. “As a first-generation American, it’s a privilege. I’m raising my children in this city. My employees live in this city. They’re raising their families here. I feel a deep obligation to engage and contribute.”

Globetrotters Engineering Corporation is a full-service professional corporation that rigorously pursues and delivers successful projects for its clients in the design and construction industries. Founded in 1974, the firm has grown to an organization of two hundred people based in Chicago, with satellite offices in Milwaukee and Washington, DC. Globetrotters continues to provide architectural, multidiscipline engineering, planning, facilities, and construction management along with consulting services to public and private sector clients in a variety of disciplines and markets throughout the Midwest.

Our vision is to satisfy our clients’ needs by making them successful and to build lifelong relationships.

ENGINEER MY CAREER: SMITA SHAH’S TIPS

On Starting Your Own Business

“It was a great experience for me in that you learn two things. One, that you’re going to take on a challenge and you don’t mind taking on challenges, which is something that stayed with me. You also learn not to give up. From a young age, you’re trying to learn things. You don’t always know the answer, but you’re willing to try to figure it out.”

On Attracting Talent

“If you want to attract smart, talented people, you also need to have some of the other infrastructure components. Renting the office space is easy; getting phones and setup is something that you can do. But you also need to make sure that you have all the right benefits and that you understand how to make sure that the people that you work with are honored and recognized.”

On Communication

“When I was in middle school, one of my science teachers told me that it’s very important for us to be able to write our science papers so that anyone can understand them—to make the theory and the analysis of a complex idea as accessible to everyone as possible. Doing engineering work is complex. Most engineers who are trained as engineers can execute the project. The complexity comes from the interplay, the coordination, and the integration of all of the different systems that you’re going to put together.”

Beyond consulting: a partner for transformation and growth

From the Slopes to the Boardroom

La Jolla Group CEO Daniel Neukomm leads a portfolio of lifestyle brands in a retail landscape where details matter more than ever

By CHRIS GIGLEY

The adventure sports business is driven by passionate consumers. Based in Irvine, California, La Jolla Group has successfully grown niche enthusiast brands such as O’Neill, Hang Ten, and Spiritual Gangster because its CEO shares that passion.

Daniel Neukomm turned his interest in action sports into a career sixteen years ago, when he was a senior at the University of Vermont. At the time, he competed on the International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association (IFSA) tour. “It’s open-face, bigmountain free skiing,” he explains. “I never did well, but I enjoyed it.”

Neukomm did much better at seizing a business opportunity. His thirst for big-mountain skiing had him traveling to where the big mountains were: Utah. But he had a problem when he got there. “I got altitude sickness every time I went, and there was no solution at the time,” he says. “I could either leave the mountain or breathe supplemental oxygen.”

The only people who had easy access to supplemental oxygen then were elderly people with respiratory problems. To get it, he’d need a prescription. Neukomm was undeterred. “I knew pilots flying above twelve thousand feet were required to use supplemental oxygen all the time,” he recalls. “Aviation-grade oxygen isn’t regulated by the FDA, but it has the same benefit.”

Plus, it was easier to acquire. With his own problem solved, Neukomm could have stopped there—but he didn’t. While in Utah, competing in IFSA races, he sought agreements with resorts to supply guests with supplemental oxygen. He made a solid case, quantifying the value of his service by estimating the lost revenue of altitude-sick skiers who went elsewhere for vacations.

It worked. When he graduated in 2001, Neukomm was off to the Wasatch Mountains to start his supplemental oxygen service,

Daniel Neukomm CEO La Jolla Group Irvine, CA

Mountain Oxygen. Unfortunately, he launched during one of the worst periods in history for the tourism industry. He also realized his plan of opening an oxygen bar at ski slopes wasn’t what the market needed.

“Mountain Oxygen quickly evolved into an equipment-renting business, renting the machines used to fill oxygen tanks to customers,” he says. “They used the oxygen in their hotel rooms the first three nights of their stay to acclimate to the altitude.”

Eventually, Neukomm signed an agreement with the Aspen Skiing Company to supply Colorado resorts with his service. Because Mountain Oxygen was the only game in town, every resort signed a noncompete agreement and the company grew from there. Neukomm sold off the business in 2006.

Living in resort towns and skiing one hundred days a year was certainly memorable, but the most important takeaway for Neukomm is what he learned in the first few years of his career. Neukomm says Mountain Oxygen had to be a scrappy business to make it after the tourism downturn. Lucky for him, he was too young to know better and plunged headlong into the business anyway.

“I maxed out five credit cards,” he recalls. “For the first two years, I had to work other jobs to make ends meet while we got it started. We had some great wins and huge losses when I didn’t know if I would make payroll.”

Struggling out of the gate was a common narrative among many entrepreneurs at the time. Unlike them, however, Mountain Oxygen wasn’t a well-funded tech start-up. “I can’t imagine Facebook having many concerns about making payroll,” Neukomm says.

The struggles, though, made him a conservative business operator, taking a more practical approach to running a business as opposed to making big and complicated moves to make the business appear sophisticated.

The approach has paid off at La Jolla Group, which Neukomm joined in 2013. In the time between Mountain Oxygen and La Jolla Group, he earned an MBA at the International School of Management and worked in a middle-market private equity group in Silicon Valley. His first introduction to La Jolla Group came when the company invited him to serve on its board of directors.

“At the time, the action sports industry had really only known an era of upward and

onward,” Neukomm says. “It had just produced a couple billion-dollar brands, and the people running them were the ones who started them.”

The retail climate, however, had shifted. The period of meteoric growth—when suppliers could ship the wrong orders and retailers would still sell it all—was over. Growth was a matter of details.

“Retail got tough, and action sports became a mainstream sector at the mercy of mainstream retail dynamics,” Neukomm says. “La Jolla Group had to be objectively and proactively managed.”

While he remained passionate about action sports, the conservative business operator in him set up a rigorous analytical process to measure every single aspect of the business.

“Everything changed,” Neukomm says. “We were able to get microclarity on everything we did and understand the rationale behind it. We had objective and relevant rationales for how decisions got made. That’s the overarching lens through which everything else took shape.”

Neukomm can now apply his approach to another fast-changing facet of the action sports industry: marketing. La Jolla Group’s seven lifestyle brands are largely sold through retailers, but consumers now demand access to the brands instead of relying on retailers to deliver the messages.

“I think that’s part of a broader culture shift influenced by technology,” Neukomm explains. “Consumers have been motivated and trained to have almost unlimited transparency on pricing and brand positioning.”

Few leaders in the action sports industry are more capable to deliver what action sports consumers want. Neukomm isn’t just a sharp CEO who’s proven himself as an entrepreneur; he’s a passionate consumer himself.

Wells Fargo Capital Finance wellsfargocapitalfinance.com

The Commercial Services Group at Wells Fargo Capital Finance offers factoring, asset-based financing, inventory financing, and letters of credit for companies in the U.S. and abroad. We have expertise working with manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, and distributors in many consumer product industries including apparel, textiles, and action sports.

Better Together

How overcoming obstacles led to one Special Olympics leader’s life of helping others do the same

BY ZACH BALIVA

When you work for an organization such as Special Olympics, there’s inspiration around every corner. Sometimes it can come from the most unexpected places. This past December, Angela Ciccolo, the nonprofit’s chief legal officer and secretary, encountered two young, female athletes in Abu Dhabi. Although their story is motivating, it was the girls’ mother who made a lasting impression. “I met a mother dedicated to being an advocate for her two daughters with intellectual disabilities,” Ciccolo says. “She believes in them and is fighting to make a beautiful world where they can live full lives.”

The mother is building that world, in part, through Special Olympics. Abu Dhabi will host the 2019 Special Olympics World Games, where those very same daughters hope to compete in their favorite event: bowling. It’s stories like these that resonate the most with Ciccolo as she leads a lean department dedicated to helping Special Olympics fulfill its mission to provide competitive sports opportunities for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them the chance to become physically fit as they build friendships and experience teamwork.

Ciccolo—a mother of three—has built her career on overcoming obstacles and then helping others do the same. She started life as one of the few black children in her Indiana neighborhood. And despite an economically disadvantaged upbringing, she was able to attend Georgetown University, where she studied international economics and commerce before enrolling in the university’s respected law program.

After starting her legal career in private practice, Ciccolo joined the NAACP in 2000 as assistant general counsel. In 2008, she became the distinguished civil rights organization’s first female general counsel. In that role, she did more than manage all internal and external legal affairs; she led grassroots initiatives and helped orchestrate demonstrations, marches, and protests to help stop injustices and raise awareness of issues affecting marginalized and underserved citizens.

ANGELA CICCOLO CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER, SECRETARY SPECIAL OLYMPICS WASHINGTON, DC

During her tenure at the NAACP and presently, Ciccolo has served on the US Commission on Civil Rights Virginia State Advisory Committee. Additionally, she created a law fellow program that has helped women and minority students enter the legal profession. “Somebody gave me an opportunity a long time ago,” she says.

“That opportunity has made a huge difference in my life. So, now, I try to create opportunities for others to seize.”

There have indeed been challenges along the way, but Ciccolo is no stranger to adversity. “I was often the first minority child attempting to do something,” she says. “I just kept fighting because all I wanted was to have the same chance as everyone else.” Today, she’s helping children and adults with intellectual disabilities develop and demonstrate their abilities through athletics while increasing awareness of their abilities and needs.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver created the organization in 1968. Now, Special Olympics has more than five million athletes, one hundred thousand annual events, and programs in 170 countries. Ciccolo and her team concentrate on all legal work, including contracts and employment matters, in addition to issues related to compliance, risk management, fundraising, data privacy, and governance. Ciccolo has also created a legal internship program at Special Olympics similar to the one she implemented at the NAACP. Those interns get real, hands-on work with the nonprofit that often bears fruit many years later.

“I think people see the value in what we do for people and the community, and that motivates them to stay connected with us,” Ciccolo says. Many Special Olympics interns join law firms that make significant financial contributions or offer pro bono legal services to the organization.

ANGELA CICCOLO (FRONT ROW, THIRD FROM LEFT) COCHAIRS A TASK FORCE ON INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY, VALUES CHAMPIONED BY SPECIAL OLYMPICS.

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“You can make the best impact when you’re leading empowered people who are committed to a single, important vision.”

ANGELA CICCOLO

As Ciccolo heads her team, she asks each member to collaborate and communicate constructively. Most importantly, however, she wants her employees to treat one another with respect. Ciccolo—who started working at age fourteen—knows what it’s like to work at all levels of an organization. “I’ve learned about hard work, but I’ve also learned how to be a good listener and how to be a good team member,” she explains. “You can make the best impact when you’re leading empowered people who are committed to a single, important vision.”

A commitment to diversity and inclusion also helps Ciccolo be an effective leader. She’s cochair of a new Special Olympics diversity and inclusion task force with Harvard University law professor and Special Olympics board member, William Alford. By the end of the year, the group will create a tool kit that program leaders can use to enhance diversity in the communities they serve. “Special Olympics is an organization for all people, and we want that to be true for our athletes, our volunteers, our employees, and everyone else that encounters us,” Ciccolo says. “Diversity and inclusion initiatives help us remove barriers at all levels to ensure that everyone has a place in the Special Olympics family.” Recently, her legal team welcomed a Special Olympics employee with an intellectual disability. Ciccolo says she hopes the move will convince other employers to consider hiring more people with intellectual disabilities and people with different backgrounds and experiences.

Special Olympics does more than give athletes the chance to compete. Some use the organization’s health programs to get eyeglasses for the first time. Others take advantage of educational opportunities to become leaders in their schools and communities or to earn jobs at the highest levels of business and government.

For Ciccolo, the chance to empower athletes and work on behalf of a large nonprofit is rewarding. “I love that I can provide opportunities and change lives through what I do,” she says.

In the past five years, Special Olympics has added nearly one million new athletes while expanding its global footprint. By providing sound legal work and demonstrating the values of diversity and inclusion, Ciccolo is empowering a new generation of athletes with intellectual disabilities to demonstrate what they can achieve.

Courtesy of "Special Olympics”

The Tech Behind the Tables

Steve Wilder is crafting City Furniture’s IT to find digital solutions to physical problems

By BILLY YOST

Steve Wilder SVP, CFO, CIO City Furniture Tamarac, FL

Steve Wilder has a hard time taking credit for just about anything. As chief financial officer, chief information officer, and senior vice president with more than thirty-five years of experience at Tamarac, Florida-based City Furniture, it seems like bragging rights would be easy to come by. Despite being part of a small fraternity of waterbed-salesmen-turned-retail-furniture powerhouses, Wilder manages to dole out credit to just about anyone other than himself when recounting how he’s managed to help the company’s revenue grow to more than $340 million from $10 million. “I’m still, and will continue to be, a work in progress,” Wilder says. That’s about the extent of his bragging.

After overseeing the company’s audit in 1981 as an outside CPA, Wilder joined City Furniture (formerly Waterbed City) as comptroller. City Furniture cofounder Keith Koenig saw value in Wilder’s abilities, while Wilder saw the culture and entrepreneurial spirit that the company’s founders, Keith and Kevin Koenig, had built into the company. “When given the opportunity, I had to jump on it,” Wilder says.

City Furniture’s culture is a theme Wilder talks about often. He sees himself as committed to a company that is incredibly devoted to not only its customers, but also the 1,300 to 1,400 families of City Furniture employees, whom Wilder says are carefully considered every time the company makes a decision.

City Furniture developed an early partnership with IBM—a relationship that continues to this day—so during the burgeoning tech revolution of the 1980s, Wilder saw the company make technological strides that were ahead of the game. That experience served Wilder well when he assumed the role as CIO. “I was close enough to watch those homegrown applications develop and be involved,” he says. “It afforded me the opportunity to learn the business from the inside out.”

Initial technical advances proved incredibly beneficial, but IT progress languished in the 2000s with stalled development that made scaling difficult amid an economic recession. Wilder, admittedly not an IT guy, was tapped to take over as CIO by CEO Keith Koenig, who told Wilder: “I’m not looking for a technical person. I want a business person.”

What Wilder didn’t have in technical expertise, he made up for with sheer willpower. “I was the person that was always asking why and questioning the systems that

“I was afforded the opportunity to make some mistakes along the way, and I wasn’t chastised for it. I learned from my mistakes.”

STEVE WILDER

were being developed. I was sort of a pain in the ass to the developers, to be honest,” he says with a laugh. Although he might occasionally get bogged down in the technical details, Wilder has worked to embrace the bigger picture. “I was afforded the opportunity to make some mistakes along the way, and I wasn’t chastised for it,” he says. “I learned from my mistakes.”

Wilder’s accumulated knowledge has meant big things for City Furniture’s IT future. One of the initiatives paramount to City Furniture’s immediate future is its continued partnership with IBM and the concurrent development of three mobile applications. These applications, Wilder believes, might be revolutionary for not just furniture retail but also big box retail at large. The Digital Sale Distribution Channel for Clearance Merchandise mobile app will exponentially expedite the process of making clearance merchandise available for purchase. “You’ve gone from days or weeks before it’s even available for sale—when a customer physically walks into a showroom and sees it—to a matter of minutes,” Wilder says. “It’s revolutionary and has potential ramifications that go beyond just furniture.” Together with IBM, City Furniture has succeeded, he says, in developing a digital solution for a physical problem.

That application development will also come in handy as Wilder works to get an iPad in the hands of every City Furniture showroom employee, which will allow even new sales associates access to product and inventory information alongside returning shoppers’ preferences and wish lists—all without having to disengage and leave a customer unattended.

Wilder’s quest for a majority of associate adoption has garnered attention from several larger retail chains whose attempts have proven unsuccessful. “They haven’t had the adoption rate, and they’re excited to see what we’ll be able to do,” Wilder says. “Our associates want new technology. I think it is a game changer.”

Wilder hopes to streamline customer financing by leveraging existing and proven web services between City Furniture’s backend system and its finance partners. “The customer can apply for a City Furniture card while seated at the dining room table they plan to purchase,” he says. City Furniture’s trusted lenders can guide customers through three rungs of potential financing in an effort to ensure customers from all walks of life get safe and secure financing. Wilder describes the ongoing app development of these three projects as one of the most important initiatives he’s encountered during his tenure at City Furniture.

So if Wilder isn’t at least a partial architect of City Furniture’s success, who is? Wilder speaks of City Furniture’s founders as his inspirational guideposts, though Kevin Koenig passed away in 2001. He also speaks glowingly of Garry Ikola, senior vice president of sales, and virtually every team member. Wilder also cites his late father as his role model and Iris, his wife of thirty-seven years, as the keys to his personal and professional success. He speaks often of empowering the future leaders at City Furniture and his commitment to “leaving my part of the company in a position for someone to do bigger and better things.”

Whether Wilder will admit it, that is a tall order.

Breaking Down Silos to Make HR Work Together

University of Chicago Medicine’s Bob Hanley has made big strides in changing up how the organization’s human resources department handles its business

By JOE DYTON

Bob Hanley knows a thing or two about human resources, including the fact that what constitutes the status quo is always up for debate.

For the past three-anda-half years, the thirty-five-year HR veteran has been the vice president and chief human resources officer for University of Chicago Medicine, a leading academic medical center in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. Primarily, Hanley has worked to enhance employees’ well-being while balancing their needs and concerns with the goals of the organization overall.

When he joined the University of Chicago, he noticed the HR department was overly compartmentalized and made it part of his mission to better unify it.

“What was most noticeable was people that had been working in the HR function for

many, many years didn’t know each other’s names,” Hanley says. “They knew that they worked in HR, they may have known you worked in the benefits area within HR, but they really didn’t interact with you, bond with you, and certainly didn’t socialize with you. That affected the quality of work and the speed in which we would deliver our services.”

Although he was still adapting to the organization, Hanley wanted to combat this issue, so he began to talk to his team about how to develop a better model for delivering services. He also started having all-hands meetings with the entire department. The meetings, which he still holds, allow team members to see what colleagues are working on and the kinds of projects

Bob Hanley VP, CHRO

University of Chicago Medicine Chicago, IL

FRANKLY PHILANTHROPIC

Bob Hanley started his own charity, Hot Dogs for the Hungry, in 2011, when he lived in Columbus, Ohio, and has continued it in the Chicago area. His desire to give back inspired the charity where he and a growing number of volunteers serve hundreds of hot dogs, along with snacks and drinks, to the homeless every Saturday. Since Hanley began the charity, it’s expanded to giving out hygiene kits, clothes during the winter, and gently used backpacks.

“It is the most incredible feeling to help other people. It’s a small thing that we are doing, but in some ways it is pretty big when you stop the hunger pangs that people have,” Hanley says. “This is the real deal for me; these are people who live on the streets, who don’t know where their next meal will come from.”

that are happening around them so they learn how to get involved and offer support.

Another collaboration effort is to involve the entire department in its long-term strategic plan, not just the HR leadership team.

“It was important for us to communicate to the team that they have an important role in our future, they have opinions, they have perspectives, and we owe it to them to be involved in the process,” Hanley says.

The team also participates in a variety of team-building events outside of the office. After all, team building helps break down barriers, builds trust, enables better relationships, and ultimately improves productivity—and it really shows today.

“Those are the things that I could point to the last three-and-half-years: high emphasis on communication, showing our appreciation across HR to each other, and recognizing the good work of each other,” Hanley says. “People raise their hands now where in the past they hadn’t.”

The main tool Hanley helped put into play to expand collaboration is the human resources business model. Knowing an organizational change like this could meet some resistance, he took a methodical, step-by-step approach to rolling out the model.

“One of my key directors basically said to me, two weeks on the job, ‘Bob, this is why I left my former organization. I didn’t sign up for this here,’” Hanley says. “So, my response to her was, ‘Just listen. Hear me out. We’ll talk about this together, and we’re going to see if this is the right solution.’ She’s one of the biggest advocates of this model today and one of my biggest supporters.”

First, Hanley made it clear this model wasn’t about cost reduction. “People begin to listen when there’s not that focus on cost,” he says.

The other thing he did was focus on the organization’s foundation first; Hanley didn’t want to bring in HR business partners and highly experienced senior employees if the foundation wasn’t right. So, the focus went toward transactional, repeatable activities that the HR team does each day, such as handling compensation and benefits administration. The first year, the focus was on developing University of Chicago Medicine’s shared-services organization, which holds a majority of the department’s resources. As Hanley put this model into motion, it was imperative that those who performed administrative tasks knew they were just as valuable to the business as someone working in a strategic role.

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“If we can’t get the little things right, we don’t have any business dealing with the world of strategy. . . . We’re going to prove to the organization and earn our right to do the more strategic things.”

BOB HANLEY

So, the human resources department took the repeatable activities performed daily and organized the new business model around them. There is now a call center set up, which is the first point of contact for employees, that handles more than thirteen thousand employee inquiries per quarter, measures call times, and has a case-management system. Other parts of the shared services include employee and labor relations, staffing, onboarding, and HR employee data management.

“The thought was, ‘If we can’t get the little things right, we don’t have any business dealing with the world of strategy,’” Hanley says. “So, we’re going to prove to the organization and earn our right to do the more strategic things.”

Once Hanley and his team laid the model’s foundation, they began to develop its center of expertise: smaller organizations that focused mostly on strategy, policy formulation, and designing work for the organization.

The last piece of the puzzle was to find an HR business partner. The goal was to hire just one to start, so after the partner was hired, he or she was assigned to the organization’s largest unit, Patient Care Services.

“We were going to prove to ourselves and to the organization that we could add value,” Hanley says. “I wanted to create the appetite for the organization to say, ‘Wow, how do I get one of those HR partners for my business?’”

The hire proved to be a valuable one to the organization. An HR business partner isn’t necessarily a human resources person first, so he or she brings a strong operations focus and analytical view to the business, which helps advance solutions for complex workforce challenges in Patient Care Services.

“To be successful, you have to listen to your workforce,” Hanley says. “There is nothing worse than asking me what I think, having me tell you, and then having it go in one ear and out the other. We don’t want to fall into that trap. I’ve been working in human resources for over thirty-five years, and I can tell you I hit the lottery working here.”

Time is Money

Meredith Williams is making knowledge management work for lawyers

By BRIDGETT NOVAK

MMeredith Williams’s brother, John Erin Williams, died in an automobile accident when he was seventeen years old.

“He hydroplaned on a wet road,” she recalls. “He was the tenth person to pass away in that exact location. My parents decided to sue the state to ensure a railing was placed there to prevent more deaths. It was a long, drawn-out battle. I was fifteen and fascinated by the effect lawyers could have on people’s lives.”

Several years later in 2002, after earning a degree in accounting and a JD from the University of Memphis, Williams started her career as an associate with Baker Donelson. At first, she primarily worked on corporate matters but planned to eventually focus on tax law. The firm also asked her to help research technology and its effect on the practice of law.

At that time, technology was just starting to play a role in legal work. However, since then, it has only become increasingly important. When the partner who had been heading up the effort decided to return to his bankruptcy practice, he asked Williams to take over the newly named knowledge management (KM) department. “He handed me the reins and told me I had too much personality to be a tax lawyer,” Williams says, with a laugh. “I don’t know if that’s true, but this has been a very good fit.”

The department grew and evolved into a full administrative area for the firm. KM “connects the right people with the right information and technology at the right time,” Williams explains. What that means in a law firm is analyzing and organizing information and making sure the people who need it can easily access it. “It also means breaking down the legal functions so we understand what is required to do the job efficiently,” she says.

As the firm’s chief knowledge management officer, Williams oversees a staff of nine, most of whom are attorneys or have worked within the practice of law. She prefers that they stay active in their practice areas so they stay up to date on the issues and know how best to manage projects and draft procedures. “You have to understand how a law firm works before you can improve the processes,” she explains.

The KM department works with other groups within the firm and several strategic external partners—including WinWire Technologies, Handshake Software, Neudesic,

Meredith L. Williams Chief Knowledge Management Officer

Baker Donelson Memphis, TN

and Fireman & Company—to deliver highvalue systems and information to the firm and its clients.

Williams says the department also calls on some individual lawyers in the firm for specific advice. However, some balk when asked to do work that is not billable. To address this, the firm launched an internal venture fund program. “It enables us to pay our lawyers 100 percent working-attorney credit for the time they spend on KM projects,” she explains. The KM department

“You have to understand how a law firm works before you can improve the processes.”

MEREDITH L. WILLIAMS

“We have to predict the information we are going to want two or three years out and build our strategies around that.”

MEREDITH L. WILLIAMS

handled ninety-three projects in 2016, utilizing the services of 110 subject-matter experts throughout the firm. “We would not have been able to accomplish that much if it had just been me and the full-time staff,” she says.

As far as Williams knows, Baker Donelson is the only firm paying its lawyers in this fashion to help with KM projects. “I’m often told I am the envy of many industry colleagues,” she says. “Of course, some firms have larger KM departments, with as many as one hundred lawyers from lots of different practice areas. That is one way to get around having to pay your practicing attorneys.”

While some might think technology would make KM easier, Williams says it has actually increased expectations. “We are expected to know everything about every matter, whether it is an opposing counsel’s actions or a specific judge’s previous rulings,”

she explains. “It is all discoverable now, so we need to have it if an attorney needs it.”

Technology also accelerates the development cycle. “We have to predict the information we are going to want two or three years out and build our strategies around that,” Williams says. “We have to stay focused on the information that will be most helpful and not get distracted by the speed of technological change or the latest gadgets.”

KM doesn’t just concentrate on the firm’s needs, though. In the beginning, the team was entirely internally focused, making things easier for the attorneys. Now, however, more than half their time is spent building applications for clients. For instance, the firm offers free mobile apps to help labor and employment and bankruptcy clients understand these areas of law without incurring legal fees. They also offer an app that addresses franchise issues.

Another thing that has changed about KM is its importance. The International Legal Technology Association offers programs and networking events for KM professionals and holds a yearly conference entitled Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession. “Over the past five years, the number of attendees has more than doubled, from one hundred to more than two hundred, and this year more than 40 percent were new to the profession,” Williams explains. “Much of this has been driven by regulations with which we—both firms and clients—must comply. KM is no longer a nice-to-have; it has become a need. I love being involved in such a growing and dynamic field.”

The Firm Directory product team at Neudesic congratulates Meredith Williams for her well-deserved feature in Profile magazine. We’re proud to provide law firms, professional services companies, and other knowledge-intensive organizations with the only expertise location software with built-in secure collaboration. Visit thefirmdirectory.com.

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Making it a Done Deal

Chief intellectual property counsel

Rob Tuttle has been a part of many of ON Semiconductor’s largest transactions. Here, he outlines the makings of a good deal and how to put a bad deal back on course.

BY MARY KENNEY

ON Semiconductor has been going through some changes. The Phoenix-based semiconductor giant has, in the past few years, doubled in size through a series of acquisitions, most notably acquiring Fairchild Semiconductor International for $2.4 billion in September 2016. Today, the company sports about 30,000 employees and 60,000 products.

During this transitional period, Rob Tuttle has served as the company’s chief intellectual property (IP) counsel and is primarily responsible for IP litigation management, patent portfolio development, and transactional support work. An invaluable asset during these acquisitions has been the target companies’ IP portfolios, and Tuttle has been the perfect person to advise on such matters. With a degree in electronic engineering and a JD, he knows both the science and the legal aspects of these portfolios. Now, he reflects upon ON Semiconductor’s period of aggressive growth and the essentials of what makes a good deal.

ON SEMICONDUCTOR HAS MADE MANY MAJOR ACQUISITIONS IN ITS EIGHTEEN YEARS IN BUSINESS. WHAT ROLE DID YOU PLAY IN THEM?

I’ve been with the company, as an attorney, for five years. I started at ON Semiconductor right after the company completed a deal to buy SANYO Semiconductor for approximately $600 million—a deal that came with thousands of patents. Since that time, I have advised ON with respect to all aspects of IP in several large acquisitions: Truesense Imaging, Aptina Imaging, and Fairchild Semiconductor. These deals doubled the size of ON and added thousands of patents to ON’s portfolio.

WHAT SORTS OF DEALS ARE THESE?

Each of these deals advances specific corporate objectives to enter certain end-markets. For example, the Truesense and Aptina deals in 2014 were focused on entering the image sensor space

in the industrial and automotive markets, whereas the Fairchild acquisition supported ON’s goal to become the premier supplier of power management and analog semiconductor solutions. Prior to being an attorney, I was a semiconductor designer for the predecessor of ON, Motorola, and this expertise helps me to understand the deal from both a technical and legal perspective. IP is usually a major part of any deal that ON does, so deals in our space often require a healthy balance of being able to speak nerd and speak legalese. That is my team’s specialty.

BASED ON THIS EXPERIENCE, HOW DO YOU THINK A GOOD DEAL STARTS?

In a theoretical, perfect world, you would learn every last detail about the target company or IP portfolio you’re buying before you even approach the target. But you very rarely get the opportunity to vet a target for long enough to learn every last detail. Instead, you hire competent outside lawyers to help bridge knowledge gaps, and you then advise the client about perceived gaps in your knowledge that might still exist. Notably, though, there is business advantage in closing those gaps as fast as possible. So, the better deals tend to start with a better than average understanding of the target because knowledge gaps and possible risks associated with those gaps are easier to close.

WHY DO THESE DEALS NEED TO MOVE SO QUICKLY?

They move quickly for various reasons. Sometimes the acquiring company has an influx of cash, and other times there’s a unique business opportunity that did not present itself previously. Still, other times, there are multiple potential acquirers chasing the same deal. Regardless, these opportunities happen very quickly, and you have to move quickly on those deals because the money or unique business opportunity doesn’t stay around forever, and you have to strike while the iron’s hot.

HOW DOES A BAD DEAL BEGIN?

Bad deals tend to start with one or both parties involved in the deal not fully appreciating what they want or expect before the deal begins. This can include technical, financial, or even cultural differences between target and acquirer. That said, if the parties are as educated about the deal as they can be beforehand, understand their expectations beforehand, and exchange information as openly as possible during diligence, that usually creates more successful outcomes and deals that close rather than fall apart.

HOW CAN AN M&A DEAL BE TURNED AROUND, IF THIS BEGINS TO HAPPEN?

In my opinion, the best way is for the parties to really try to understand what is motivating the other side and see if there is

ROB TUTTLE VP, CHIEF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY COUNSEL ON SEMICONDUCTOR PHOENIX, AZ

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“It requires a lot of collaboration and creative thinking on the sides of both parties—thinking through what you can give on in order to accomplish what the other party is interested in and also get what you need out of the deal.”

ROB TUTTLE

flexibility to be had. Let’s say there’s an issue about the timing of the deal close where the acquirer would like the deal to close fast. That could be a problem from a financing or government-approvals perspective. But if you can find out what’s really driving the concern and communicate it, you can usually structure some sort of compromise because both parties are trying to work toward the same goal of closing the deal. You have to be creative to structure these fixes.

Back to the above example, let’s say the acquirer is most concerned about timing because they want to capitalize on a window of opportunity for some of the products of the target business and the target is more concerned about price but flexible on timing and exact deal structure. Then, the acquirer may pay license fees to the target while the deal is pending in order to begin making licensed products and still take advantage of that window of opportunity. It requires a lot of collaboration and creative thinking on the sides of both parties—thinking through what you can give on in order to accomplish what the other party is interested in and also get what you need out of the deal. We had a recent deal where we used collaborative tactics like this and were able to save a deal that was sinking.

WHAT IS COMING UP NEXT FOR ON SEMICONDUCTOR’S IP DEPARTMENT?

We just doubled the size of the company, added thousands of new patents to the portfolio, and now have IP team members in Korea and Taiwan, so we’ve got a lot of digesting to do. I joke with my team that it is like the boa constrictor swallowing the rabbit. The great news is that these changes uniquely position us as an IP department in serving the needs of a top semiconductor supplier, so if a great market opportunity presents itself, we will be game.

Kyle Barrett manages growth and change to ensure that McWane Inc. remains a sustainable company for future leaders

By DAVID LEVINE

During his more than twentyfive years at McWane Inc., Kyle Barrett, vice president and director of corporate tax, has seen enormous changes both in the company he serves and the industries in which it works.

The McWane family of companies includes businesses that cast ductile iron pipes and manufacture products to deliver clean drinking water around the world. The Birmingham, Alabama-based McWane is family-owned and conducts business in eleven countries throughout the world. Founded in 1921 by J.R. McWane as a pipe foundry, it is now under the leadership of the fourth generation of McWanes. The company grew through acquisitions of other foundries as the industry consolidated during the 1970s through the 1990s. “When I started working in the mid-1980s, we were in three states with five plants,” Barrett says. “Now, we have more than forty operations in eleven states, three Canadian provinces, and eleven countries in North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia.”

Barrett earned an accounting degree from the University of South Alabama and took his first job in 1984 with the big-eight accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand, which is now PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). One of his

clients was McWane, which hired him as its assistant controller in 1991 when it decided to bring its income tax work in house.

The company has continued to grow after acquiring its last foundry in 1995. After that purchase, McWane bought a fire extinguisher manufacturer in Alabama and a pressure tank manufacturer based in Tennessee. More recent acquisitions have been in the tech sector, including companies that focus on cellular communications with distributed antenna systems, radio frequency coverage extensions, and intelligent wireless control and monitoring technology. “We are trying to diversify,” Barrett explains. “In the United States, we have gone about as far as we can in water distribution.”

Barrett sees advantages to working at a privately owned company. “As a family-owned business, the chairman’s goal is to leave the company in better shape for his children,” he says. “We don’t have to look at short-term goals like a public company might. We make sure to leave a sustainable company in good shape for future generations. When I first started here, Mr. McWane emphasized that he didn’t want to leave

Kyle Barrett VP, Director of Corporate Tax McWane Inc. Birmingham, AL

any tax burden to his children. We don’t try to cut current taxes and leave taxes for the next generation to pay.”

To do that, the company keeps it simple, domestically at least. But Barrett admits that it’s harder to do that internationally. Different countries have different ownership requirements and entities that are better for liability purposes. The tax situation in the United Arab Emirates, for instance, requires 51 percent local ownership. In situations like that, Barrett relies on the assistance of lawyers and international tax experts and works with PwC. “We use their expertise to help guide us in various parts of the world,” he says. “There’s too much for one person to know.”

McWane’s approach to leadership is decentralized. The company puts a lot of responsibility in the hands of each vice president and general manager at their respective plants, which makes it more entrepreneurial. “That has been successful, and it is the approach I use as well,” Barrett says. “I try to give as much responsibility as possible to everyone to do their job and grow with the company.”

That entrepreneurial spirit has not only grown the company in size, but it’s also shepherded in a new age of technology. “This is dating me, but when I started, we used

thirteen-column spreadsheets,” he says. “I remember portable computers, when they first came out in 1984 or 1985; they were like a big suitcase. I carried those through airports. Now, of course, we download everything into tax software. Otherwise, I don’t know how we would do it.”

Without today’s technology, the company’s multistate tax filings would be much more difficult. McWane has multiple filings in multiple states, and there are different filing methods in various states. Additionally, the company has to be more meticulous than ever. “States have become more aggressive over the past five to ten years, trying to get as much revenue as they can after the 2008 economic downturn,” Barrett says. “A lot is through taking an aggressive tax posture. It takes a good amount of work, compliance-wise, and dealing with state auditors to come to solutions. It takes much more time these days than it used to.”

Barrett serves on several committees to work for change in the accounting field. As a part of the Fiscal Responsibility Committee, which is a joint committee between the Alabama Society of CPAs and the Business Council of Alabama, he provides expert opinion to elected officials on possible tax legislation. “We give them some real-world impact,” he says. “Legislators can come up with what they think is good tax policy, but they don’t always realize how it works in the real world, what the impact would be, or whether it will achieve the intended result or might have disastrous results if it is implemented the way they originally wrote it.”

In addition to his work in Alabama, Barrett was recently appointed to the US Chamber of Commerce Taxation Committee, which also reviews possible tax changes, a position to which he’s looking forward. “Compliance has become quite burdensome, and the amount of different returns we have to provide these days takes up a lot of time,” he says. “Regulations over the past eight years have grown substantially. After this recent election, we certainly expect tax reform to be on the near-term agenda, and the voices on the committee want to give their opinions on what the best approach would be.”

Bradley

congratulates Kyle Barrett, Vice President and Director of Corporate Tax at McWane, Inc., on being recognized for his outstanding accomplishments.

Bradley is proud to serve as counsel for McWane, Inc., a manufacturer of premium products for customers around the world and an industry leader in water infrastructure, technology solutions and support.

“It’s been a pleasure to watch Kyle develop into a leader at McWane, Inc. over the past twenty-five years. We’ve worked together on several state legislative projects, and he’s always been a helpful and reliable sounding board. I am also proud to count him as a friend.” —Bruce P. Ely, Partner at Bradley

Change Is Always on the Horizon at KLX

Heather Floyd expands her financial prowess as corporate controller to take the aerospace hardware distributor to new heights

By JOE DYTON

When a commercial, business, or military plane takes to the skies, the aircraft is held together by scores of fasteners, bearings, and seals. At KLX Inc., which stocks more than one million of these parts from more than three thousand manufacturers, the company as a financial entity relies largely on the efforts of Heather Floyd, its controller and vice president of finance.

Aerospace was not on Floyd’s radar early on. She began her career as an audit manager at Ernst & Young, but it was never her objective to stay in public accounting long term. “My goal was to make it to the manager level, not to stay to make partner,” she says. “I wanted to gain enough experience to open up opportunities.”

In 2010, that opportunity materialized in the corporate financial reporting department at B/E Aerospace. For Floyd, it was the right fit: coming from a fast-paced environment

where she audited an array of different companies, she didn’t want the scope of her activities to narrow. B/E engaged in a number of acquisitions, which gave her exposure to various kinds of accounting and reporting responsibilities. She had the chance to work on purchase accounting for new acquisitions, debt issuances, and equity transactions. The department was lean, with most people having a public accounting background as well. “It was an exciting environment to be a part of,” she says.

Yet, there were differences to get used to. At Ernst & Young, Floyd had managed a huge staff, and now she had only two direct reports who worked rather independently. Client-led meetings at a long conference table gave way to long hours in the

Heather Floyd VP of Finance, Corporate Controller

KLX Aerospace Wellington, FL

office, nose to the grindstone. “I remember on my first day, they asked me to work on purchase accounting entries for two acquisitions that had recently closed,” Floyd says. “It was like, okay, now I have to create this from scratch. That excited me. I liked taking a fresh approach and coming up with work on my own.”

In 2014, B/E had reached a point of maturity that led to a change for the company, as well as Floyd. She had been director of financial reporting and internal controls for three years before being promoted to vice president of internal audit. After a year in that role, the company spun off its distribution branch, which constituted 30 percent of B/E’s business, into its own company: KLX.

The company’s chief financial officer approached Floyd and asked her if she would become corporate controller for the new business. “I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity,” Floyd says. “It was a great transition out of internal audit and a chance to round out my finance and accounting experience.”

Still, she had waded into a fairly major disruption that would take a while to settle down. Employees who had been at the company for a decade or two questioned the strategy. After four years with B/E, Floyd found herself in the position of the new kid on the block once again. Today, Floyd says it’s clear that the split was the right business decision.

“Making the distribution segment a standalone public company brought much more focus and attention to the intricacies of this business,” she says. “It’s enabled us to grow faster and become much more profitable than had we continued to be a segment of a larger organization. It’s nice to see those plans come to fruition.”

The transition required, among other things, an accounting system overhaul. In some cases, the company could only use licenses for the old systems during the transition period. Additionally, B/E was using an accounting system built for a manufacturing business, so KLX embarked on implementing a new system that was more appropriate for distribution operations.

It was a challenging project, as Floyd and her team made sure the new system would harmonize with the way the KLX business operated. So, they developed necessary interfaces, and they did it in less than a year, which Floyd says is pretty phenomenal. At B/E, many of the acquired companies didn’t switch software, so there were more than ten different accounting systems in place. At KLX, everything was under one umbrella.

“I work closely with the CFO so we can be nimble on our feet and able to adapt to change when it comes.”

HEATHER FLOYD

“It’s been working great,” she says of the new system. “There are little bumps you hit every now and then, but the software has all the components we need.”

Now that things have settled down on the software front, Floyd is free to come to work every day and further focus on her longterm goals. “I see myself as the key resource for finance,” she says. “I want to make sure I’m in tune enough with what’s going on in the businesses so that we can be flexible in reporting and get information to management so they can make decisions in a timely manner. I work closely with the CFO so we can be nimble on our feet and able to adapt to change when it comes.”

Floyd says the innovative spirit of the company’s owners means that change is always on the horizon. That just reaffirms that she made the right decision years ago in leaving public accounting and that any concerns that variety would go by the wayside were unfounded.

“It’s been rewarding for me because I’ve gotten to ride the wave,” Floyd says. “It’s helped my personal growth, as well as my professional growth. We continue to look for other businesses we can acquire to continue to improve our product offering and expand our coverage. All the time, we say, ‘We’re not stopping.’ And I love that.”

Congratulations to Heather Floyd and KLX for this well-deserved recognition. Houlihan Lokey is proud of its longstanding relationship with KLX and looks forward to continuing to provide outstanding valuation services. Houlihan Lokey was recently awarded “Best Valuation Service – Hard to Value Assets” in HFMWeek’s annual Hedge Fund Services Awards.

The Winding Road to Becoming CEO

Passion, not security, has driven Jason Flowerday’s career through a variety of leadership positions and entrepreneurial pursuits. It’s all been leading to his new post with 3D Signatures.

By RANDALL COLBURN

TThe biopharma industry discovers new treatment opportunities every day, fighting to help discover new cures and pathways to relief. Having so many treatment options available, however, can become cumbersome for doctors. Every person is unique; what works for one patient might not work for another. However, 3D Signatures, with its expertise in precision medicine, might have the solution.

Based on the findings of Dr. Sabine Mai, a Manitoba-based researcher, 3D Signatures is able to zoom in on an individual’s chromosomes and, in analyzing the arrangement of its telomeres, develop a greater understanding of a patient’s cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. How aggressive is it? How will it respond to different kinds of treatment? By answering these questions, the technology allows for personalized diagnostic and prognostic tests and therapies that can save patient lives, not to mention an abundance of time and money that otherwise would have been spent on ineffective treatments.

“There is no other company currently doing what 3D Signatures is doing,” says Jason Flowerday, 3D Signatures’ newly appointed CEO. He’s referring not just to the technology, but also to the proprietary analytical software the company has developed alongside Mai. “Our Teloview software measures and scores a number of very specific criteria in how telomeres are organized in 3-D,” he says. “The technology

Jason Flowerday CEO

3D Signatures Toronto, ON

that 3D Signatures has developed and the programs that we are aiming to move into the marketplace are incredibly disruptive as far as being a new class of biomarker and being the first in this class of 3-D telomere analysis.”

That’s a lot of weight for a new CEO to carry, but Flowerday’s experience is vast and, for someone in the pharmaceutical industry, surprisingly diverse. He grew up in Sudbury and Ottawa in Ontario, and then he studied pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto. His initial goal was to study medicine, but that didn’t necessarily work out. “Like everyone else who has that same goal, I discovered it was unbelievably challenging,” Flowerday says with a chuckle. That led him to life sciences juggernaut Bayer, where the recent graduate cycled through a variety of sales and marketing roles in pursuit of a leadership position.

“Bayer was and continues to be an excellent organization in terms of identifying talent early on,” he says. “If you put your hand up and demonstrate your capabilities and track record, the opportunities generally present themselves.”

While at Bayer, Flowerday also had the opportunity to participate in a management intern program. “I had a particularly strong mentor at the time that really distinguished himself as far as being a quiet and confident leader, not having to be the cheerleader of the bunch,” he says. “That was a particular insight that left a mark on me.”

A business degree from Queen’s University and a passion to be his own boss emboldened Flowerday to do something that not a lot of people do in the healthcare environment.” Along with an industry veteran,

Mike Ford

Genomic imaging for precision medicine

Participating in Major Prostate Cancer Clinical Trial

The PRECISE trial marks the Company’s first step toward validation and approval of TeloViewTM to accurately stratify prostate cancer patients into risk groups.

Developing an entirely new class of biomarkers

TSX.V: DXD

“If you put your hand up and demonstrate your capabilities and track record, the opportunities generally present themselves.”

JASON FLOWERDAY

Flowerday formed RxMedia Healthcare Communications. “I think there was a certain naïveté to my thinking at the outset,” he admits, but the pharmaceutical e-learning company enjoyed year-over-year growth. After six years, he did it again, teaming with a longtime friend to build Orphan Canada Inc., a company that sought to commercialize therapies for genetic and rare diseases. Again, Flowerday’s leadership led to new opportunities and success when Orphan Canada was sold to Knight Therapeutics.

Flowerday says the secret to his success is speed and initiative. “We saw gaps in the marketplace that traditional players couldn’t fill,” he says. “We were able to move quickly and to mobilize the resources and capital to be successful. Bigger, slower competitors didn’t have the dynamism to move as quickly as RxMedia and Orphan Canada.”

Flowerday’s youth and drive were key to his success, but they also presented challenges. “I was fortunate to achieve a number of milestones early in my career and wound up managing people with substantially more experience than I had,” he recalls. His approach to naysayers was to ensure he was presenting a transparent and honest version of himself that didn’t have a hidden agenda. He cites the lessons he learned at Bayer: “Lead from the heart, quietly and with humility.”

Flowerday brings all of these lessons and experiences with him to 3D Signatures, another company that appears to have the forward-thinking dynamism that’s long fueled his pursuits. He thinks that 3D Signatures’ technology has the potential to disrupt the diagnostics and biopharma marketplace, allowing for new avenues of personalized medicine. It’s an exciting place to be, and not one he would have imagined in the earliest days of his career.

“I always had the aspiration of one day becoming a business leader, but it’s difficult to know through which sequence of steps that would happen. Sometimes there’s surprise, and sometimes the steps are planned and intentional,” he says. “But I would say that I never expected to have such a diverse career, having touched so many related but disparate industries within life sciences. It’s kind of unorthodox, where I’ve been and what I’ve done, but I’ve loved it all.”

Listening to Flowerday, it’s clear that an unorthodox approach is sometimes the most satisfying. Life is about finding yourself through a variety of diverse experiences, he argues, but so is business. “I’ve been attracted to different challenges and opportunities that seem to present something that nobody else is doing,” he says. He’s not kidding, either. Just look at his résumé.

Toni

Ciccolo, Angela 184 City Furniture 187 City of Memphis 152

Clark, Roger 88

Cobbs Allen 30

Crystal & Company 78

Culbert, Jim 109

Cypress Fairbanks 103

Gatton, Puja 123

Gilbert, Teresan 15 Grypp, Keith 120 Guaranteed Rate 18 H

H&R Block 64

Hanley, Bob 190 Hart, Dan 126

Hartley, Martin 20 Hillaby, Cindy 68 Horton, Andrea 73

Intrexon 62 Itron 32

Jackson, Frankie 103 Jefferson County Public Schools 112

Kane, Ken 18 Keane, Michael 148 Kellwood Company 120 Klotz, Rick 82 KLX Aerospace 204

L

La Jolla Group 182 Lalonde, Suzanne 28 Last, Andrew 62 Lerner, Eric 90 Licato, Rich 71

Lieberman, Tressie 41 Long John Silver’s 59 Longo’s 142 The Lubrizol Corporation 15 Luftglass, Maribeth 100

Maltseff, Paul 84 Mayo, John 106

McFarland, John 36

Daise, Bruce 64

Dallas Mavericks 10

Datalogic 84

Denson, Bruce 30 Diamond Schmitt Architects 116

McNeill, Jim 158

McWane Inc. 202

McWhorter, Dorri 174 Miller, Brett 112

Muldoon, Catherine 130

Neiman Marcus 93 Neukomm, Daniel 182 Newton, Tim 45 Nohe, Richard 56

Farrow, Robert 32

Flattum, David 160 Flowerday, Jason 206 Floyd, Heather 204 Follett Corporation 25

Fowles, Bill 155 Fragomen Worldwide 168

Michael Keane explains how servant leadership helps drive the new direction of P.F. Chang’s corporate culture 148

Papa John’s 45

Pechman, Robert 132

P.F. Chang’s 148

PIMCO 160

Preston, Tracy 93

Prokos, George 10

Public Storage 88

Pure Canadian Gaming 28

PURE Insurance 20

Ravener, Bob 136

Realty ONE Group 126

Rist, Michael 75

Robinson

Haden, Laurie 48

Rohrbacker, Leslie 168

Rothschild, Joy 165

Seagate Technology 132

Shah, Smita 178

Sheehan, Karen 144

Smith, Alex 152

Snap Kitchen 41

Soules, Jon 116

SPAAN Tech 178

Special Olympics 184

Sproat, Mark 25

SunEdison 158

Synaptics 36 Systemax 90 G

Texas Roadhouse 123 Tupperware Brands 144 Tuttle, Rob 198

University of Chicago Medicine 190

Petcare 75 Volk, Liz 142

Wilder, Steve 187 Williams, Meredith 193

YWCA Metropolitan Chicago 174

Zobian, Cindy 78

the Dallas Mavericks became the hottest ticket in town.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

Fragomen Worldwide’s Leslie Rohrbacker offers her secrets to a successful, sustainable corporate culture learned over her decade-plus as a litigator. 168

Kristin