Profile Magazine Q1/22

DEI Comes First in the Second City

Four leaders transform businesses and communities in Chicago P7

LEAD LIKE ALI

Ali Seals’s empathy and honesty shine at Weyerhaeuser, where he encourages and advocates for his legal team

P112

Time by Ping’s revolutionary Time Automation software captures the underlying activity data behind a timekeeper’s workflow, enabling detailed insight into operational efficiencies and more timely, accurate bills that build trust with your clients.

The future of timekeeping is here.

Your analytics are only as good as the data that lie beneath them.

THE DEI ISSUE

How nine leaders have made diversity, equity, and inclusion foundational in their work

Melonie Parker, Google | P108

Ali Seals, Weyerhaeuser | P112

Chantel Terrell, Savage X Fenty | P118

Susan Bridges Gilder, Beiersdorf | P122

Towanna Tindall, Trulite Glass & Aluminum Solutions | P126

Kim Lazerus, Maverik | P130

Donovan Mattole, Brenntag | P134

Susie Long, Bridgestone Americas | P138

Renata Ribeiro, Carnival Corporation | P142

That’s What Oats Do

In 2017, Oatly came to the US with the intention of expanding their mission of providing a new plant-based drink. While the environmentally conscious shopper and big-city hipster might already be on board, Oatly seeks to meet people less accustomed to alternative milks. That’s where Heidi Hackemer comes in.

P58

Doubling Down on Diversity

J. Vincent Williams infuses Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council with new ideas and new ways of doing business

P8

Next-Level Compliance

Shannon Stokes encourages collaboration and growth among her Newpark Resources team

P34

Law Firm of the Future

As chief knowledge officer, Meredith WilliamsRange leverages data to differentiate Shearman & Sterling in a rapidly changing marketplace

P52

In Every Issue

Editor’s Letter P6

Focus P7

Index P181

New Team in Town

Eric Hagen found the opportunity of a lifetime in launching a franchise and bringing Major League Soccer to Austin, Texas

P82

Playing Defense

When COVID-19 tried to intercept the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2021 seasons, Jeffrey Miller made sure the game could go on

P92

Engage Wellness

Nikki Salenetri leans into her passion for fitness to help Gympass employees lead a healthy lifestyle

P148

Making the Grade

Ralph Johnson leads a cutting-edge procurement program founded on his belief in people development, partner relationships, and process improvement

P167

Eyes on the Community

Mitch Melfi never loses sight of CommonSpirit Health’s commitment to the people it serves

P175

Michelle Keppeler (Hackemer), Gillian Fry (Williams), Andrew Maher (Stadium), Tadudzwa Tapfuma (Johnson)

ON THE COVER

Weyerhaeuser’s Ali Seals leads his team with honesty and transparency, doing all he can to make their ambitions a reality

P112

Photo by David Boyd

CREATIVE

VP, Creative Production

Kevin Warwick

Managing Editor

Frannie Sprouls

Editors

Melaina K. de la Cruz

Sara Deeter

KC Esper

Julia Thiel

Hana Yoo

Staff Writer

Billy Yost

Contributing Writers

Zach Baliva

Dan Caffrey

Lucy Cavanagh

Peter Fabris

Will Grant

Frederick Jerant

Natalie Kochanov

Keith Loria

Lindsey Lubowitz

Maggie Lynch

Christopher Palafox

Clint Worthington

Designer

Melody Pohla

Photo Editors/Staff

Photographers

Cass Davis

Gillian Fry

Profile® is a registered trademark of Guerrero, LLC.

© 2022 Guerrero, LLC guerreromedia.com

1500 W. Carroll Ave. 2nd Floor Chicago, IL 60607

Subscriptions + Reprints

For a free subscription, please visit profilemagazine.com/ subscribe. Printed in China. Reprinting of articles is prohibited without permission of Guerrero, LLC. For reprint information, contact Reprints & Circulation Director Stacy Kraft at stacy@guerreromedia.com.

CORPORATE

CEO & Publisher

Pedro A. Guerrero

Chief of Staff

Jaclyn Gaughan

President, Group Publisher

Kyle Evangelista

VP, Hispanic Division

Head of Audience & Engagement

Vianni Lubus

VP, Finance

David Martinez

VP, Sales

Ben Julia

Director, Client Services

Cheyenne Eiswald

Senior Client Services Manager

Rebekah Pappas

Client Services Manager

Brooke Rigert

Director, Client Services–

Corporate Partnerships

Taylor Frank

Director, Talent Acquisition & Engagement

Haylee Himel

Director, Talent Acquisition

Heather Steger

Senior Director, Corporate Partnerships & DEI Solutions

Krista Horbenko

Director, Events

Jill Ortiz

Director, Sales

Kelly Stapleton

Director, Sales Training & Development

Alexa Johnson

Director, Sales Onboarding

Justin Davidson

Content & Advertising Managers

Rebekah Crone

Samantha Eberly

Brandon Havrilka

Kippin Keller

Elif Negiz

Annie Peterson

Zak Shelton

Hannah Tanchon

Drew Thomas

Ashley Watkins

Do the Work

Diversity, equity, and inclusion. Those three words have been at the forefront of leaders’ minds since summer 2020.

The line between work and personal life is blurred in a way it hasn’t been before. Leaders across functions, not just human resources, seek answers for how to support their teams and to cultivate welcoming, inclusive environments for all.

DEI initiatives are not new to the workplace. For decades, employees have been advocating for diversity training, forming employee resource groups, and mentoring the next generation of diverse leaders.

In our annual Culture issue, we want to showcase leaders who understand the importance of representation and have been putting in the work long before 2020.

Leading this issue is Ali Seals, senior counsel and legal team director at Weyerhaeuser. The unspoken rule of needing to prove his value was burning him out. He received advice from a Black business coach to take his foot off that gas, which helped him refocus and rethink how to lead his team—now with empathy and transparency.

Melonie Parker, chief diversity officer at Google, speaks on the opportunity to not only source diverse talent and create a culture of belonging but also to “amplify voices to our most senior leaders across the company.” Savage X Fenty’s Chantel Terrell reflects on how she empowers her team and sets a standard for personal growth. Bridgestone Americas’ Susie Long supports DEI initiatives as the company shifts from a traditional manufacturer to a mobility solutions organization.

Our Focus section spotlights four veteran leaders in Chicago who are making the business case for diversity. Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council’s J. Vincent Williams notes that traditional business has been disrupted and this “gives us a chance to infuse new ideas and new ways of doing business.” At Purpose Brand, Diane Primo helps companies “put purpose into practice” and reexamine their DEI efforts. Ralph G. Moore reflects on his forty-two years of leadership and Marquis Miller, the City of Chicago’s first chief diversity officer, shares how he is helping the city reflect the makeup of its residents.

We’ve made many strides, but the journey is a long one. I hope you find guidance and inspiration in these pages to advocate for DEI, no matter your leadership role.

Facebook: @gh.profilemagazine

LinkedIn: @Profile_ExecMag

Twitter: @Profile

Frannie Sprouls Managing Editor Gillian Fry

Photos

The Business Case for the Right Thing

CHISTAR By Billy Yost

A US Chamber of Commerce poll taken in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic has detailed just how disproportionately detrimental the coronavirus outbreak has been for minority-owned businesses. The poll showed that 66 percent of minority small businesses were concerned about having to permanently close their businesses versus 57 percent of their white counterparts. “The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on minority-owned small businesses is further evidence of systemic inequalities in our country,” US Chamber President Suzanne P. Clark said in response to the findings . “Even more concerning, the pandemic could exacerbate and elongate the economic struggles already facing minority-owned businesses and families.”

That is the stark reality J. Vincent Williams stared down his first day as president and CEO of the Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council (ChicagoMSDC) in June 2020. The council’s mission—to increase business

New ChicagoMSDC CEO J. Vincent Williams is here to show you how diversifying infuses new ideas and ways of doing business

J. Vincent Williams

President and CEO

Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council

opportunities between major buying organizations and minority-owned businesses—couldn’t be more prescient or essential.

This doesn’t seem to rattle Williams. In fact, it’s only motivated him to redouble his efforts. “You can call this a challenging time, but I just think of it more opportunistically,” Williams says. “Everyone is home because of the pandemic, the economy is completely disrupted, so I think it’s an ideal time for any new thought leader to move into a leadership role with a different set of cards to play.”

The ChicagoMSDC was born out of a different emergency: the racial and political upheaval of 1968. Williams says he hasn’t taken on the new role to upend the efforts of the council over the last fifty-two years. But his ideas to refocus in some key areas seem to be coming at exactly the right time.

“The way that we’ve traditionally done business has been completely disrupted,” Williams explains. “While our outreach efforts are continued, our strategic and marketing efforts have to be reconfigured, retooled, rethought, and reimagined, and I feed off that energy. I love those opportunities because it gives us a chance to infuse new ideas and new ways of doing business.”

Williams believes that at a time when the fight for racial diversity has commanded so much attention, it’s a springboard to help connect minority-owned businesses to

larger businesses. “One of the things I’m really looking to bring to this position is a new way of thinking about business diversity,” Williams says. “I want corporations and chief procurement officers to realize that minority businesses aren’t just janitorial or landscaping services; we are everywhere. We are content management providers, technology providers, CPAs, and professional services.”

The CEO says the ChicagoMSDC is also able to provide best practices that are a win-win for both providers and procurers. “If you’re an organization that is looking to institute a business diversity component, it can be very challenging if you’ve never done it before,” Williams explains. “Our job is to connect you with an existing organization that can share with you what is working for them. That way you can minimize or mitigate some of the common errors along the way.”

Williams says it’s like buying a new car that doesn’t even need to be test-driven. The testimonials alone should lift most prevalent roadblocks to a successful investment in diversity.

“It’s about working smarter, not harder when it comes to business diversity. We can connect you with all of these minority-owned businesses, corporations that are utilizing their services, and they can tell you firsthand what that experience is like,” the CEO explains.

Mentoring is also a key component of Williams’s wider philosophy. Connecting newer and diverse

“Everyone is home because of the pandemic, the economy is completely disrupted, so I think it’s an ideal time for any new thought leader to move into a leadership role with a different set of cards to play.”

perspectives with more seasoned veterans just makes sense. “It’s just a good way for businesses to connect and share some of the resources that they provide,” Williams says.

On the peer-mentoring side, Williams says his own search for a Black professional mentor was incredibly difficult at the start of his career. He was the first in his family to go into the corporate sphere and didn’t have anyone he felt he could connect to personally about his journey.

Eventually, he was connected with a white mentor who believed in Williams’s ability. But he had to take his advice with a grain of salt. “He told me to keep my head down and fly under the radar,” Williams remembers. “I’m 6’2, 240 pounds, and I’m the only Black guy here. That wasn’t going to happen. So, I decided to flip it.”

Williams says it may sound cliché, but he decided to be the best. To be number one on his sales team. To be

fifteen minutes early for every meeting. To ask for extra projects. To let his work speak for itself, but also to be an advocate for himself. “It’s allowed me to appreciate my journey,” Williams says. “I know a lot of the younger generation may be in a rush to get to where they want to be, but I like to think when it’s time, you’ll know.”

The CEO says the next generation is at a difficult impasse, and that’s what motivates him to continue to work on its behalf. “We see it every day: from George Floyd’s killing to some of the police department’s decisions, to the reality that if I walk out of the building in a suit and tie and match a description of someone, I might die,” he says. “That worry and anguish is compounded every day along with all of the other issues the country is dealing with right now. I hope it builds our resiliency and demonstrates just how strong and capable we are.” CHISTAR

“We can connect you with all of these minority-owned businesses, corporations that are utilizing their services, and they can tell you firsthand what that experience is like.”

Putting Purpose into Practice

CHISTAR By Dan Caffrey

The word “purpose” can be intimidating when said out loud, especially if you’re talking about your own company. But as Diane Primo points out, a business’ core identity isn’t as elusive as one might think. “It’s not some pie-in-the-sky thing,” she says of her work as founder and CEO of award-winning public relations and branding agency Purpose Brand.

When guiding a new client toward their truest self or a new initiative, it isn’t about pure reinvention but bringing out what’s already there and converting it into something tangible that benefits society. “It’s intended to be very action-driven from a business standpoint,” Primo explains. “We’re here because we want to help people put purpose into practice. We think it makes brands more relevant. It makes communities stronger.”

When an organization partners with Purpose Brand, it’s never merely a makeover.

At award-winning PR firm Purpose Brand, Diane Primo and her team guide clients toward their truest selves to transform communities

Diane Primo

CEO and Founder

Purpose Brand

The Chicago-based firm has helped an evergrowing roster of companies—Easterseals, AAR, McKissack & McKissack, and Origin Investments to name a few—find their callings through an expansive slate of services that includes content marketing, community engagement, web development, and workshops. But regardless of the entity, Primo and the rest of the Purpose Brand team challenge every organization to come to the table with transparency and an open mind. For instance, there’s no shame in wanting to be financially lucrative.

“Making money is not a dirty word,” Primo says. “Consumers get it. They’re very, very sophisticated now. And when we talk about sophistication, should someone hide the fact that they make money? Is that in conflict? No.”

She goes on to bring up a client who’s in the business of protecting and growing wealth. “There’s a value to that,” Primo continues. “People can’t exist without understanding financial management—understanding investment and what you do. But what they’re looking for is how honest you are about what you do and how you do it. They want you to stay true to your values.”

In 2021, companies’ values almost always involve reexamining their efforts and messaging surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and Primo and her team help them do so authentically. If DEI is commodified and viewed simply as a marketing strategy, a company is guilty of what Purpose Brand calls “woke washing”—the

inauthentic use of purpose. Doing so is a risk not only to one’s own integrity, but the well-being of their business.

In Primo’s eyes, DEI is the “biggest workforce issue of the twenty-first century.”

To ensure that it’s tackling DEI fully and effectively— both internally and with its clients—Purpose Brand has embarked on a comprehensive research campaign across all demographic cohorts: African American, Latinx, women, white male, Asian American, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities.

“When people think about diversity, they often only think of people of color,” says Primo, who published her book ALL REPORT: Culture, Diversity, Leadership—Stop Talking And Execute in December 2020. “Nope. Diversity is around the full mix.”

After examining twenty-five widely used DEI programs across the corporate world, Purpose Brand’s researchers concluded that some of the most effective initiatives are cross-training, unbiased training, sustained interventions, employee research groups, and the most concrete practice of all—hiring a diverse group of employees for senior leadership teams. But Primo stresses that none of these tactics are a catch-all, especially given the complex nature of DEI conversations.

For example, there has been upwards of a 500 percent growth in senior diversity officers across corporate America, all while the number of Black males in senior leadership positions has increased from 3.1 percent to

“We’re here because we want to help people put purpose into practice. We think it makes brands more relevant. It makes communities stronger.”

only 3.2 percent since the 1980s. Then there’s the added problem of most DEI efforts failing to reach white men. So, there’s still a lot of work to do. There will always be a lot of work to do.

Primo stays especially active in two initiatives designed to drive social impact at Purpose Brand and make the world a more equitable place. First is SOAR, which she cofounded with the intent of empowering, connecting, and growing the number of women of color in the media industry.

“We brought SOAR together because those voices were not at the table in significance, and there’s no question that that affects the way a story is told,” Primo says. “There’s a checks-and-balances system that the news performs. But that same check and balance is probably not performed in the newsroom itself.”

Although SOAR regularly hosts events that bring together female thought leaders from across print, TV, radio, and digital, the COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately

forced them to scale back on in-person gatherings. Primo says she and the other cofounders are currently planning a virtual event focused on DEI.

The second social-impact initiative is the Primo Center, where she sits on the board. As the largest service provider to homeless families in Chicago, the Primo Center isn’t just about providing temporary and permanent housing, but wraparound services that address the social determinants of health, such as trauma-informed mental health services and violence prevention programs for at-risk youth. Its efforts caught the attention of Jeff Bezos, who awarded the Primo Center $2.5 million in 2018 as part of his Day One Fund.

Primo believes that, in today’s age, any successful company should feel a responsibility to contribute to its community—to find its purpose in the most authentic and holistic sense of the word. “The world has changed, and it’s not going back,” she says. CHISTAR

“What [people] are looking for is how honest you are about what you do and how you do it. They want you to stay true to your values.”

Redefining Supplier Diversity

How Ralph G. Moore drives change in business diversity, minority business development, and community transformation

CHISTAR By Frederick Jerant

Having a diverse supplier base is a sound business practice. But Ralph G. Moore, president of Ralph G. Moore & Associates (RGMA), believes that the benefit of a diverse supplier base goes beyond having multiple sources of supply. He firmly states that the driver for numerous sources of supply is the need for innovation, which fuels corporate growth and operational excellence.

“This thirst for innovation has created an increased demand for new suppliers that bring new ideas that impact the entire value chain,” he notes. And Moore’s work is to connect the thousands of emerging, innovative minority suppliers with corporations “that get it.”

This business practice—engaging minority suppliers to execute corporate strategies—is called supplier diversity. RGMA’s mission is to redefine supplier diversity and position minority suppliers to transform communities and contribute to America’s global competitiveness.

Ralph G. Moore President Ralph G. Moore & Associates

RGMA focuses on collaborating with corporations to enhance their supplier diversity programs. The organization recently developed a digital supplier diversity program assessment platform that provides a road map for corporations on improving supplier diversity programs regardless of the current level of operation. Some of the corporations that RGMA has worked with include Chicago United, DuPont, Dow, Delta Airlines, McDonald’s, Major League Baseball, the Walt Disney Company, Colgate-Palmolive, and Walmart. Moore’s forty-two years of leadership in this field has earned him the moniker “The Godfather of Supplier Diversity.”

Moore’s professional journey began at Arthur Andersen & Co. after earning a degree in accounting from Southern Illinois University. He was just the tenth person of color in the 1,600-person Chicago office. Moore credits Andersen for providing him the foundation for being an effective business leader.

In 1974, he became vice president of Chicago Community Ventures Inc., a Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company (MESBIC). Over the next three years, Moore got to know Reginald F. Lewis, general counsel for the American Association of MESBICs, and Maryland Congressman Parren Mitchell, the founder of the Congressional Black Caucus. “That experience was a masterclass on how to leverage equity capital to grow scalable minority businesses and why this work was essential to the future of Black and Hispanic communities,” Moore says.

Moore’s final assignment was controller for the Parker House Sausage Company. President Daryl F. Grisham was among the first Black corporate board members, having been the first Black board member at Illinois Bell, Harris Bank, and Eli Lilly and Company. “He taught me the importance of community service,” Moore says.

Moore launched RGMA in 1979, and the firm’s pivotal opportunity occurred in 1980 when Baxter Healthcare hired RGMA to assist in developing a “minority purchasing program.” Moor notes, “I will always be grateful to Baxter’s Will Lucas as that project became the foundation of our supplier diversity practice.”

In the 1980s, in addition to the expanding corporate supplier diversity practice, RGMA became a critical source of technical assistance for emerging minority businesses through a series of contracts with the Small Business Administration and the Minority Business Development Agency.

RGMA’s reputation for innovative ideas and impactful training presentations led to a significant seminar presentation at the National Association of Purchasing Management Annual Conference in 1990. “By fate, Harriet Michel, president of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), was in the audience,” Moore says, “which resulted in a collaboration and friendship that continues to this day.”

He recalls how that collaboration created the most prolific training platform in supplier diversity history. “My

team convened the first annual NMSDC National Program Managers’ Seminar in July 1993 and continued to lead this event for twenty-four years,” Moore says. “The event grew from 40 program managers to over 170 in the subsequent years. Many of today’s supplier diversity best practices were introduced at this event, including the popular RGMA Five Levels of Supplier Diversity maturity model.”

This strategic partnership also had a global impact. For example, Moore was an essential contributor to two NMSDC training missions that introduced supplier diversity to the Republic of South Africa shortly after Nelson Mandela became president.

In 2010, in recognition of his contributions to minority supplier development, Ralph Moore was awarded the coveted NMSDC Leadership Award. It’s the organization’s highest honor bestowed upon a minority business leader. “This is the most important recognition of my career,” Moore states. “It affirmed my life’s work.”

He’s quick to point out that “we must utilize the current racial reckoning and outpouring of corporate support to focus on building capacity within the Black and Hispanic business sectors while changing how corporate America engages minority suppliers. Corporate CEOs must take the lead in communicating the supplier diversity value proposition to all stakeholders.”

In addition to his national activities, Moore advocates for business diversity on the home front, too. “I’m a proud Chicagoan, and I have given a lot to this city because it has given a lot to me,” he says. His community engagement includes serving on Chicago-area boards, including Habilitative Systems Inc., the Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council, Junior Achievement of Chicago, Chicago City Colleges, University of Chicago Hospitals, and the Chicago History Museum.

His inspiration for all these achievements comes from a stunning discovery he made during his first day at Arthur Andersen fifty years ago. Moore’s aunt had requested that he say hello to Leonard Spacek, who worked closely with Arthur Andersen and became managing partner after his death in 1947. “During our conversation, I discovered that my Aunt Virginia was Arthur Andersen’s live-in maid for the final twelve years of his life, from 1935 to 1947.

“Thus, in the span of one generation,” he continues, “my family’s relationship with corporate America evolved from being ‘the help’ to being a member of the professional staff of a major accounting firm. That realization inspires me to plant the seeds that will produce thousands of scalable Black businesses by 2050.”

There is no doubt that Moore’s leadership will continue to drive change in business diversity, minority business development, and community transformation. CHISTAR

“This thirst for innovation has created an increased demand for new suppliers that bring new ideas that impact the entire value chain.”

The Diversity Long Game

In the quest to provide a more equitable and welcoming workplace, the range of variables can often be so wide that defining the problem is as crucial, if not more so, than crafting a solution. Marquis Miller, the City of Chicago’s chief diversity officer, sees no difficulty in identifying a multitude of issues when it comes to attaining more representative levels of diversity and inclusion.

“We all know Chicago’s history, and that is something that we can’t change,” Miller explains. “It’s something that will constantly be a stigma to the city, but it’s something that, especially with current events and the goings-on in our nation’s capital and across the country, we can learn from.

“I believe that the key to having a focus on building from our true strength as a community,” he adds, “is that we all have our understandings and our own emotions based on our history, but the main deal is to be authentically inclusive going forward.”

As the City of Chicago’s chief diversity officer, Marquis Miller supports authentic inclusion initiatives to help the city government reflect the makeup of its residents

CHISTAR By Billy Yost

Marquis Miller

Chief Diversity Officer City of Chicago

PROGRESS FOR ALL

In just three years, Marquis Miller has helped the City of Chicago make meaningful headway when it comes to representation in one of the nation’s most diverse cities. In efforts both big and small, Miller is helping create opportunities for those with diverse backgrounds and experiences. His work includes:

CHISTAR Providing process improvement ideas and other enhancements through a review of the city’s hiring plan and a DEI operational plan with the Chicago Department of Human Resources

CHISTAR Partnering and collaborating with Chicago City Council, the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and other city departments to promote new and existing DEI initiatives

CHISTAR Review and prepare reports on hiring to help identify barriers to DEI and solutions to overcome those barriers

CHISTAR Developing new partnerships that will enhance Chicago’s ability to reach as wide and diverse a population as possible, including face-to-face meetings with fifteen community organization leaders and staff to introduce the DEI framework and plan implementation

A WIDE SCOPE

It has been one of the most challenging times for a role that is relatively new to begin with. Miller is tasked with supporting Chicago’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice as well as the city’s Chief Equity Officer Candace Moore in cultivating and delivering services that address racial and class disparities in employment, income, housing, and economic development throughout Chicago.

“Especially in a global city like Chicago, there is an understanding that the city’s personnel needs to reflect the makeup of its constituents,” Miller says. “As the chief diversity officer, I am empowered to help move the needle toward that reflection of our various communities and make sure that the departments and mayoral administration understand what we’re doing in that regard.”

Miller has also worked to expand the 2018 inclusiveness and diversity framework for the city, with more added emphasis on fortifying opportunities and advancement for job candidates from underrepresented demographics.

His previous experience with the National Minority Supplier Development Council has undoubtedly been beneficial in Miller’s efforts in collaboration with the Department of Procurement Services and the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. Miller provides ongoing support to the development and implementation of a diverse business inclusion strategy that supports economic equity throughout Chicago’s communities.

A BETTER REFLECTION OF CHICAGO

As the city continues to evolve more inclusive practices and opportunities, Miller has evolved his own approach to the CDO position.

“Especially in a global city like Chicago, there is an understanding that the city’s personnel needs to reflect the makeup of its constituents.”

“My goals are not simply to boost diversity numbers from X to Y,” he explains. “I want to help this environment reflect the city as well as possible. I want to make sure that our hiring plan, our recruiting practices, and all persons and parties feel comfortable in the workplace and comfortable with the progression of the city and its positions.”

Miller says that for a city competing for talent, cultural climate becomes critically important in attracting candidates who feel that they can bring their entire selves to the role of delivering high-quality services to the city’s residents and visitors.

And while metrics and statistics are paramount for documenting any progress, Miller says the real work of his role comes in creating “the know.” “Positioning yourself with the right people, being strategic, and adding value is critical,” Miller says. “Today, for me, it’s about learning from different people and networking, broadening my reach in the community of practice.”

Creating “the know” starts with normalizing conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion across the community. Once that happens, it enables the organization of internal and external partners to create

more diverse networks, help impact areas undergoing economic redevelopment like the Pilsen or Englewood neighborhoods, and help create sustainable growth for far more stakeholders in Chicago.

NO SMALL TASK

Miller is well aware of the challenges of his role, but his background in mission-based resource and business development as well as diversity leadership management have helped create a skill set that offers him a unique perspective in the space.

There is no silver bullet to suddenly create more empathy, acceptance, and equity. Miller understands that the long game is the only game. By pairing authentic leadership with a résumé that speaks for itself, Miller is ready for the long haul.

“Diversity and inclusion is hard. Racial equity is even harder,” Miller says. “But I think about what my colleague and friend Connie Lindsey (executive vice president and head of corporate social responsibility at Northern Trust) says: ‘Discover your purpose. Pursue it with passion.’ This is my passion.” CHISTAR

“My goals are not simply to boost diversity numbers from X to Y. I want to help this environment reflect the city as well as possible.”

TALENT

Taking Compliance to the Next Level

Early on in Shannon Stokes’s career, she was faced with an important decision.

After graduating law school at Howard University School of Law in Washington, DC, Stokes gained experience through a judicial clerkship before taking a job with Kirkland & Ellis’ litigation group, where she applied her skills to complex commercial litigation. To follow her intellectual curiosity and expand her skill set, she also contributed to projects in the regulatory group, antitrust matters, and international trade work.

for Newpark Resources, asking if she was interested in going back to her home state of Texas to take on a brand-new role as compliance counsel.

“I saw it as a good opportunity to pick up additional skills in a broad array of things and to be part of working on matters proactively instead of being brought in once they’ve turned into litigation,” Stokes remembers. “I also liked the fact that it was an opportunity to know a whole lot about one client, versus at the firm, where I only needed enough to represent a client and move on.”

By KEITH LORIA

By her fourth year at the firm, she was asked: do you want to be a litigator or a regulatory attorney? “I didn’t want to be boxed in because I knew it was more important to me to do diverse things and have a broad skill set at that point in my career,” she explains.

She wanted to gain hands-on investigation experience at the Department of Justice, but there was a government hiring freeze at the time. While waiting for the freeze to be lifted, Stokes was contacted by a recruiter

In 2013, Stokes joined Newpark Resources, which is headquartered in the Woodlands, Texas, and is now associate general counsel and deputy chief compliance officer. She oversees the company’s global ethics and legal compliance program, including the development of compliance-related training and communication plans, policy implementation, and conducting compliance due diligence and internal investigations. In addition to compliance, Stokes also provides advice and counsel on employment law matters.

Shannon Stokes encourages collaboration and growth among her Newpark Resources team—traits she’s upheld throughout her legal career

Stokes was hired as the first full-time dedicated compliance resource. “The general counsel wanted a full-time person to take ownership of the program and make it more robust and bring it to the next level,” she says.

She has done that. When she joined Newpark, Stokes was told there wouldn’t be a lot of hand holding, with one supervisor telling her it would be like drinking water out of a fire hose.

“I have had the benefit of supportive supervisors who have encouraged me to chart my own course. I’m self-taught in that I came in and really just built up my network of compliance professionals based upon my history of practicing in DC, meeting counterparts in Houston, and attending a lot of conferences,” Stokes notes. “Through that, I built up my compliance expertise and skill set and identified where there was for growth in our program.”

Her key accomplishments include drafting and implementing Newpark’s updated code of conduct, transitioning multiple processes from manual to

digital, and implementing a third-party management platform.

Stokes’s leadership style is built on collaboration and allowing her team to develop their own solutions and ideas. “We all show our best when we have a vested interest and we can see the direct impact of our efforts and when our efforts align with our interests,” she observes.

She knows the value of that because she chose her own destiny at Newpark in many ways. When she was an individual contributor in her role, she was given the freedom to set the goals for the compliance program and prioritize the projects that she worked on.

“Every year, I prepare a list of the department’s goals for the year. Then I meet with my team, and I give them the first pass at picking which project they want to tackle

Stokes

based on where they think they could be most effective based on their natural talents and interests,” she explains. “I believe that people are happiest and most engaged in their jobs when they have some form of autonomy. At the end of the day, all of the work is going to get done. I just try to divvy up the projects and tasks in a way that works for everyone.”

Stokes also wants to know her team members’ personal goals for their careers and what drives them to be successful—and no judging of their answers.

“A lot of people think it’s a trick question when you say that and think that they have to say that they have certain growth goals, but I’ve come to learn that some people perform well in their comfort zone and don’t want to go beyond that, and that’s OK, there

“I believe that people are the happiest and most engaged in their jobs when they have some form of autonomy.”

SHANNON STOKES

Courtesy of Shannon Stokes

Shannon

Associate General Counsel and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer Newpark Resources

partners with

is room for them. I’m not going to give you stretch opportunities if you’re not a stretch opportunity-type person,” she says. “That’s my approach and my style, and it works better with some than others. It takes a lot of reflection and self-awareness understand your skills and talents and to know how those align with your goals.”

Overall, Stokes is dedicated to making a difference, in fulfillment of a statement by Charles Hamilton Houston, who famously fought Jim Crow laws and who told his students at Howard University School of Law that lawyers can be either social engineers or parasites on society.

For instance, Stokes’s volunteer legal work includes working voter protection during local and national elections, providing disaster recovery-related legal assistance in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and serving on the Diversity & Inclusion and

Campaign to End Homelessness and Hunger Committees of the Houston Bar Association. She also takes pride in mentoring young female lawyers and lawyers of color.

“I’m very passionate about doing that for female attorneys and attorneys of color, because we are underrepresented in the profession and it personally resonates with me, obviously,” she says. “We generally don’t have a lot of family members or friends who have a network that can put you in contact with an attorney for mentorship and networking.

“I’ve always believed that no one accomplishes success alone; everyone needs help,” she continues. “I have benefited throughout my life from really great mentors and guidance and advice from family, friends, [and] peers, so I’m very big on sharing that breadth of knowledge with anyone it can help.”

“I have benefited throughout my life from really great mentors and guidance and advice from family, friends, [and] peers, so I’m very big on sharing that breadth of knowledge with anyone it can help.”

SHANNON STOKES

The Framework to Go Further

Nick Gerostathos specializes in implementing transformational projects that have helped companies scale up, go public, and become SEC compliant

By LUCY CAVANAGH

Some people build their careers and expertise at one company. Others, like Nick Gerostathos, build their careers across companies and industries. “I never saw myself in a career like that because I’m so motivated by learning new things and doing different jobs,” says Gerostathos, senior vice president and chief accounting officer (CAO) at RSA Security. “I wanted to grow my experience and expand my skill set around finance, not just accounting.”

Gerostathos has spent his career in finance, moving through different companies, both public and corporate, and absorbing as much knowledge as possible. His diverse approach has made him an invaluable asset, especially to the companies he has worked for in the latter half of his career. He has implemented several transformational projects aimed at revamping organizations and helping them become SEC

compliant. And in his current position, he’s using that expertise to help RSA stand out as a competitor in its industry.

Gerostathos started his career in auditing, which gave him fundamental accounting expertise. But he was hungry to learn more about how a business operates, which led him to split his time between auditing and transaction services.

“I was trying to get into a broader business mindset—more into structuring and M&A,” Gerostathos explains. “I wanted to work in finance as a driver of business decisions versus in auditing, where you are coming after the fact and trying to understand what happened.”

In 1991, Gerostathos went on to Coopers & Lybrand’s (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) global market practice, which took him to London where he helped private, non-US companies go public. “This was during the dot-com boom,” Gerostathos notes. “So I became very investment banker-like,

Nick Gerostathos SVP and Chief Accounting Officer RSA Security

deal driven, and SEC driven in an era where everyone was looking to access US capital markets.”

After a slight detour working in auditing at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), Gerostathos realized that he wanted to get back into corporate operations. He went on to land roles at companies like Revlon, MasterCard, and Anheuser-Busch, which diversified his expertise and put his international background to use.

“The role I played in controllership positions at those companies focused on making improvements surrounding processes, reporting, and controls, and how information is being provided versus just having a bunch of data,” Gerostathos says.

After working with these big corporations, Gerostathos brought his knowledge to venture capital and private equity–backed companies, including some start-ups, to help get them off the ground and scale their finance operations upward.

He helped Genesys, a tech company that specializes in customer experience solution and contact center software, become SEC compliant as SVP and CAO as well as briefly acting CFO, and he deepened his knowledge of business leadership as CFO at Hero Digital, a digital marketing agency.

“That kind of experience helps you become a better controller or chief accounting officer because you see how finance fits within the business strategy,” he explains. Duy Ho

“That made me a stronger CAO. It’s about truly understanding all facets of finance and how they can be a business partner to the organization.”

Throughout his career, Gerostathos has honed his ability to understand business operations and home in on tiny behindthe-scenes details to enable companies to become and remain tax compliant, go public in many cases, and create a framework of financial stability. In every case, implementing these frameworks required Gerostathos to help employees change their mindsets to carry forth new systems and protocols.

“It’s really about getting people to understand what success looks like. These are all very high-pressure environments,” Gerostathos says. “People need to know that though we’re not striving for perfection, we’re striving for processes that people will understand and can appreciate and emulate. It really comes down to leadership and communication to encourage people to have trust in you.”

Gerostathos’s specialty in these types of transformational projects made him the ideal candidate for his current position at RSA Security, a billion-dollar cybersecurity company that was spun out from Dell Computers. Since his joining in August 2020,

Gerostathos has been helping RSA build out its financial infrastructure and compile a global team to allow the company to grow its cloud services to include a SaaS model.

“Having come from a $90 billion behemoth like Dell, people were used to the bigger engine,” Gerostathos explains. “So we had to convert hearts and minds to become leaner and more agile and get used to not having all the bells and whistles. Some of the challenges that we had throughout the year have been trying to encourage the people that came over during the spin-off to have a start-up mindset.”

Over the years, Gerostathos has striven to not only build finance departments that contribute strategically to the business’s operational side but also to empower leadership to make good decisions, rather than simply handling compliance. He has learned to not underestimate the power of company culture and instead uses it to help foster trust.

“I’m a straightforward individual and I believe in real-time, authentic feedback,” Gerostathos notes. “I try to build a psychological trust with the team. I want people to be upfront with me. When we trust each other, we will be more comfortable with one another and start working smarter and generate better ideas.”

M&A. What matters to you.

Every M&A deal is different, and the path to value creation is unique. Learn how Deloitte M&A Services can help you move forward through the M&A lifecycle—from strategy and due diligence through integration and divestiture.

“I want people to be upfront with me. When we trust each other, we will be more comfortable with one another and start working smarter and generate better ideas.”

NICK GEROSTATHOS

The Importance of Higher Education

To Mike Sheehan, Sallie Mae is more than just the company where he works. It is the company that allowed him to get to where he is today.

From a young age, Sheehan’s parents instilled in him the value and importance of education, and specifically higher education. Despite coming from a modest background, he understood higher education was the surest path to a fulfilling life.

By LINDSEY LUBOWITZ

“I knew I wanted to pursue something that would be ever-changing, so I thought law would be a career that would involve, in some way or another, lifelong learning,” Sheehan says. He also felt confident in his abilities to

Mike Sheehan leverages his twenty-plus years of institutional knowledge to support Sallie Mae, whose mission is close to his heart

push himself as a student and knew he could put in the work that it would take to become a successful corporate lawyer.

Though his undergraduate degree was funded through grants and scholarships, his law degree was not. Sheehan would need to pay his own way through law school. He took some time off before law school to save up, but there were unforeseen expenses that he needed to cover—and that is where Sallie Mae came in.

“I had to take out loans to finance my law school education, and that was my first introduction to Sallie Mae. They basically made my law school education possible,” Sheehan says.

It was only fitting that, after he graduated from law school and worked at a private firm for a few years, he would find his way back to Sallie Mae. In 1992, he joined the relatively small legal team and began building from there. He started as an employment litigator, which is where he had the most experience, but was quickly offered a bit of a change in focus.

After two years with the company, Sallie Mae was discussing a new way of funding the business through securitizations. While this type of work would typically be assigned to a lawyer who specializes in structured finance, his boss took a chance on him. With this experience, Sheehan transitioned into a corporate lawyer who specializes in securities and corporate finance.

“I was very hungry to do something new and leading edge for the company, so I got into the corporate finance, securities, and M&A side of the business, and I really became a much more well-rounded corporate lawyer at that point,” he says.

However, Sheehan’s path at Sallie Mae was not entirely linear. In 2008, he decided to pursue another one of his passions: starting his own business.

He began as a consultant to a wide variety of different companies, but eventually he narrowed his focus and helped companies franchise their business. Specifically, he would assist companies with three or more units to franchise their operations, or

Mike Sheehan

VP and Associate General Counsel

Sallie Mae

“I had to take out loans to finance my law school education, and that was my first introduction to Sallie Mae. They basically made my law school education possible.”

MIKE SHEEHAN

people who were looking to leave the corporate world and begin a franchise themselves.

When he was running his own business, he had a bit more flexibility over his own schedule and cherished the time that he had during the day to spend with his family. But then, in 2013, Sallie Mae was in the middle of a tax-free spin-off transaction. The company was splitting into the SLM Corporation and Navient—and they were eager for Sheehan’s expertise on the matter.

“Because I have a good reservoir of knowledge about Sallie Mae, it was very helpful to them to have someone with my experience and institutional knowledge. With such expertise, I was able to help them through a very involved transaction relatively quickly,” Sheehan says.

After the initial transaction, Sallie Mae was finding more and more things for which Sheehan could help, and they eventually

asked him to formally rejoin the company. Sheehan was happy to accept the offer, and now works as Sallie Mae’s vice president and associate general counsel.

In his role, Sheehan works on a wide variety of matters. On a day-to-day basis, he works primarily with corporate finance and securities work, but his role also allows for each day to look different.

“To look for new challenges, I like to seek out the unusual and different in my work. I think that’s why I am the go-to person when something novel comes up at Sallie Mae. Who wants to be doing the same thing day in and day out?” Sheehan says.

Sheehan’s skills and expertise don’t go unnoticed by those outside of Sallie Mae. Al Sawyers, partner at Orrick, counts Sheehan as a friend and loves their work dynamic. “I love it when I see that he is calling,” Sawyers says. “I know his project

will be interesting, as he handles novel deal structures. Mike is also an experienced practitioner with high standards, which is a testament to his character.”

All in all, Sheehan could not be happier with the opportunities that Sallie Mae has provided him and for its mission more generally. He found a place of work that aligns perfectly with the values that his parents instilled in him from a young age.

“I absolutely, firmly, in my heart of hearts, believe in our mission based upon my own experience. And I also think we’re a company that really, deeply cares about its customers,” Sheehan says.

Throughout the entirety of his legal career, Sallie Mae has provided Sheehan with endless opportunities, and he is happy that he is able to continue to give back to an organization that is so close to his heart.

“To look for new challenges, I like to seek out the unusual and different in my work. I think that’s why I am the go-to person when something novel comes up at Sallie Mae.”

MIKE SHEEHAN

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Ambition propels Under Armour’s Aditya Maheshwari toward accounting and leadership excellence

By WILL GRANT

It’s difficult to imagine someone more ambitious than Aditya Maheshwari.

As Under Armour’s chief accounting officer (CAO) and global corporate controller, he has pushed himself to limits that have, at times, left the Indian-native

Aditya Maheshwari Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller Under Armour

Meera Maheshwari

isolated, alone, and away from his family while facing his first Canadian winter and the burning desire to be the best of the breed in pursuit of the KPMG partnership that he ultimately earned.

“I always knew that I wanted to make it big in my profession,” Maheshwari said. “I come from modest means and a home where my father was the sole breadwinner. From the start of my career, I wanted to move faster and be differentiated from my peers and seek opportunities to advance quickly to rise through the ranks by taking on a diverse set of challenges.”

Maheshwari initially thought he would become a business owner, but in 1998, he joined Deloitte in India as a chartered accountant. To set himself apart, he passed the US Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam, becoming one of only a few accountants in Deloitte’s Indian practice who could specifically service US businesses as Indian companies began to acquire dotcom enterprises seeking listings on US stock exchanges.

While working at Deloitte, Maheshwari taught accounting to aspiring Indian students looking to obtain their US CPA designation. One of his students, a KPMG employee, thought his teacher’s expertise and passion would be better served in-house at his employer. Maheshwari was offered

a job at KPMG, and he eagerly accepted the opportunity.

In 2004, while at KPMG, Maheshwari was encouraged to take a Canadian assignment to continue building his niche experience with US-based accounting rules and regulations. Having arrived during his first-ever winter, he quickly wondered if he had made the right decision.

“After three months of a Canadian winter, I wanted to go back home,” Maheshwari says with laugh. “But I stayed and was able to work with some truly amazing clients like Nortel Networks and SAP.” His family joined a few months later just in time to enjoy a beautiful summer together.

Around the same time, Maheshwari decided to pursue becoming an audit partner at KPMG. He worked days, nights, and spent the rest of the time networking in the Canadian corporate world forging productive connections to earn business for KPMG.

Maheshwari spent six years strengthening his skill set and KPMG’s book of business. He then moved his family to the UK—the third continent they had lived on—for a role in the International Standards Group of KPMG. His KPMG partnership came in 2013, yet after three years Maheshwari yearned for his next challenge.

“I felt that desire again,” he says. “I could’ve led the life of a partner, but I

Siegfried provides financial executives with a powerful combination of leadership advisory, talent delivery, and financial advisory services. Through this strategic bundle of services, leaders and financial decision makers can better clarify the best path forward and we can assist them with getting important work done right. For more than 30 years, we’ve worked with our clients to deliver more than just success. Learn

We help people transform themselves into better leaders to exponentially improve their lives.

Aditya, your colleagues at Siegfried would like to congratulate you for your exceptional and inspiring leadership.

“I could’ve led the life of a partner, but I wanted to learn more, to be challenged once again with an opportunity that stretched my comfort zone.”

ADITYA MAHESHWARI

wanted to learn more, to be challenged once again with an opportunity that stretched my comfort zone.”

Next, he became CAO of OpenText, one of Canada’s largest technology companies. The fast-paced global organization provided in-depth experience with M&A, and an opportunity to lead a large global controllership team.

“Having worked in three different countries on three different continents,” he notes, “this was a perfect opportunity to help build a global team, taking the best parts from my career thus far and applying my learning to fill gaps where needed.”

After four years of building a considerably more focused and stronger controllership function at OpenText, Maheshwari left to join Under Armour, once again advancing his career. “I didn’t want people when they think of me as the ‘best accountant ever.’ I want to grow as a leader, as an well-rounded professional, and make a noticeable impact,” he says.

Maheshwari said that his first year as Under Armour’s CAO yielded more defined, meaningful, and lifelong experience in dealing with complexity that many wouldn’t get in a decade. During a year dictated in large part by a worldwide pandemic, Maheshwari helped Under Armour complete a $345 million divestiture; supported several initiatives including working capital management, raising $500 million of capital via a senior convertible note offering as a precautionary measure; and helped advance the company’s operating model.

These are some of the highlights of a career built around commitment, trust, inspiration, and leadership, and yet Maheshwari isn’t pausing to reflect. There quite simply isn’t enough time as Under Armour continues its transformation journey towards becoming one of the largest, best-in-class athletic performance brands on the planet.

“I didn’t want people when they think of me as the ‘best accountant ever.’ I want to grow as a leader, as an well-rounded professional, and make a noticeable impact.”

ADITYA MAHESHWARI

Meera Maheshwari

One-of-a-Kind Challenges

By WILL GRANT

It wasn’t supposed to last this long, at least Donald Broadfield didn’t think it would. The chief intellectual property and data counsel at American Airlines thought he’d be with the company for about as long as it takes a frequent flyer to earn enough points for a free vacation flight. The attorney had handled complex litigation for six years in a firm and figured it would make sense to go in-house for a while before transitioning back to private practice. That was seventeen years ago.

The challenges of the airline industry seem to be the very reasons that Broadfield has stayed at American Airlines. The drasti-

cally shifting landscape of airline travel following 9/11, the “dead decade” of the 2000s where airlines were struggling to survive, and now a pandemic—these are the things that have made every day in the airline industry one-of-a-kind for Broadfield.

While he doesn’t express outright gratitude for the challenges provided over seventeen years, he says it’s what has kept him at American Airlines for nearly two decades.

“In some ways, airlines become a bellwether for everything else that is going on in the world,” Broadfield explains. “Everything about it is challenging. But I can honestly say I’ve never had a boring day here. I don’t know many jobs where I can deal with regulatory authorities or legal cases throughout

After seventeen years with American Airlines, Donald Broadfield is busier than ever—and it’s exactly how he wants it

the world with such regularity. There’s really nothing like it.”

DOUBLE-EDGED IP

Broadfield came to American Airlines in 2004 as antitrust counsel, but he says the nature of in-house work quickly had him widening his responsibilities. Early victories included bringing discovery, often the most expensive aspect of litigation, in-house.

The attorney was eventually tasked with helping rebuild a neglected IP portfolio. The result over the past decade-anda-half allowed American Airlines’ IP to be collateralized, an accomplishment that has brought the lawyer great pride. But it wasn’t without headaches.

“The fact that we were able to collateralize our IP for so much helped show the value of everything I’d worked hard for over the years,” the lawyer explains. “On the other side, there are now even more requirements and obligations in the protection and reporting of our IP. That has resulted in much more work on my end.”

That work is, for Broadfield, indicative of the in-house function at an airline. The legal team is expected to be able to shoulder a great deal of work, unlike companies that dish out most matters to outside counsel. “It really requires you to take ownership,” Broadfield says. “It’s required a great deal

of learning on the fly and working to pick up as much as you can, and that was before the pandemic.”

WINGIN’ IT

As more work was added to airline’s legal team, the pandemic hit. Deep cuts had to be made to ensure survival, and legal was once again asked to expand its breadth. Broadfield’s antitrust, IP, and complex litigation work now included new areas like bankruptcy—a particularly challenging matter considering so many of the airline’s third-party partners were going through bankruptcy as a result of the COVID-19 shutdown.

“In a lot of ways, it was trying to fight a gun battle while teaching yourself to shoot at the same time,” Broadfield says. “It required us to work together more than ever before and really be creative with our use of contract counsel. If you’re bringing them in, it means you’re now teaching them at the same time you’re trying to get them to help. That creates more work in the short term, but you see the benefits in the long term.”

The attorney says that the flexibility, teamwork, and adaptability shown during the most challenging time in the airline’s existence has long-range implications. The organization has learned that it can weather the most difficult of circumstances.

“Flying has a special aura around it. . . . It’s just special. It gets in your blood. It’s why I’m still here.”

DONALD BROADFIELD

Donald Broadfield of American Airlines

“At the same time, we’ve learned we can lean on each other,” Broadfield continues. “This required the entire business to work together in a way that knocked down any silos we had internally. The interdependence simply required those gone.”

It would be nice to say the skies are clear, but Broadfield’s work is perhaps more challenging now than ever. The pandemic meant fewer people on planes. As people return to air travel, American is now competing with every other airline to recover from the pandemic setback better, faster, and stronger.

“We have to spool up and spool up quickly,” Broadfield says. “I think I may be busier now than at any point since I started here.”

EVERYTHING ALWAYS

Broadfield’s extensive and varied to-do list seems daunting, but, again, it’s the reason he’s been at American for so long.

“Don Broadfield is among the hardest working lawyers I’ve ever known,” says Dee Kelly, partner at Kelly Hart & Hallman. “Mix that with his deep substantive knowledge of the law, and you understand why Don’s been so successful. He’s a force for American.”

There is antitrust litigation in the Southern District of New York in the matter of US Airways v. Sabre Holdings Corp., a holdover matter from before the American/US Airways merger of 2013. Broadfield also has work in the Northern District of Texas in American’s trademark portfolio suit

against Delta Airlines that went to trial in July 2021.

There is the ever-ballooning IP portfolio, the increased ask of a legal team that has had to endure company-wide cuts while finding ways to do more. Broadfield makes no excuses are accounting for the challenges of his role. What measures against the stress?

“Flying has a special aura around it,” the lawyer explains. “When you see planes coming or going, you realize they’ve been somewhere and are bringing new experiences along with them. It might be salmon from the Northwest, grapes and strawberries from the West Coast, or tulip bulbs from Europe. It’s just special. It gets in your blood. It’s why I’m still here.”

American Airlines has been around since 1928. It boasts the first and longest-running loyalty program—in any industry—in the world. American continues to lead in its revitalized IP, its ability to rebound from challenges, and, maybe most importantly, in giving its customers just a little extra over its competition.

But none of these accomplishments are what Broadfield thinks of when asked what stands out in his career.

“It’s the experiences and the people that sticks with me,” the attorney says. “Over seventeen years, I’ve met so many amazing people both inside and outside the company that I’ve been able to work across from. That’s what I think of. It’s what I’ll always remember best.”

“This required the entire business to work together in a way that knocked down any silos we had internally. The interdependence simply required those gone.”

DONALD BROADFIELD

Building the Law Firm of the Future

Shearman & Sterling’s Meredith Williams-Range

By ZACH BALIVA

Meredith Williams-Range remembers a time when law partners took notes on yellow pads and spoke into dictation machines to record legal briefs. Hers was the last law school class that learned how to do research in books. She can recall countless hours searching for memos in bankers boxes. In those days, groups of associates spent months analyzing documents in discovery. Today, Williams-Range can feed thirty million emails into an AI tool that analyzes everything in just five days.

The nonstop digital revolution continues to reshape the practice of law, and firms that don’t adapt will be left behind. Williams-Range first saw the shift coming in 2006 when she was an associate at Baker Donelson in Memphis, Tennessee. As intangible documents replaced paper forms and electronic discovery hit the mainstream, the US Supreme Court amended the Federal

Rules of Civil Procedure to include emails and online chats as records to be preserved.

“The birth of e-discovery changed everything,” says Williams-Range, who is currently chief knowledge and client value officer at Shearman & Sterling. “I knew that if I didn’t get on the bandwagon, I would get swallowed up because technology would eventually replace the work I was doing as an associate.”

With the practice of law shifting, Williams-Range moved from transactions to operations to serve as Baker Donelson’s first chief knowledge officer. Like other early adopters, Baker Donelson knew they needed to create a new position to analyze profitability and find new ways to attack old problems.

A year later, the global financial crisis hit, bringing even more pressure and scrutiny to law firms and in-house legal departments alike. Suddenly, clients wanted their legal services providers to do more with less. “We

How

is putting one of the nation’s oldest law firms at the forefront of digital revolution

Meredith Williams-Range Chief Knowledge & Client Value Officer Shearman & Sterling

Peter Garritano

had to be efficient to be effective. We had to find a new way to operate. And we knew that technology was part of that solution,” Williams-Range recalls.

At the same time, Williams-Range was getting more deeply involved with an organization that would help her harness the power of technology to drive results. She volunteered to help coordinate international conferences for the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) and was later elected president of the group’s board of directors. The ILTA provides education, connection, and resources for technologists in legal, and serving in a leadership role gave Williams-Range a front-row seat to how her peers were continuing to enhance the delivery of legal services.

Larger coastal firms were starting to see continued opportunities created by ongoing disruption in the industry as Williams-Range was coming off the ILTA role. In New York City, leaders at Shearman & Sterling wanted someone to harness these innovations. They called a recruiter and asked for the best. The recruiter called Williams-Range.

As Shearman & Sterling’s chief knowledge and client value officer, WilliamsRange continues her demonstrated ability to streamline processes and implement

new technologies to improve results. “My team exists only because of how seriously technology is impacting our industry,” she says. “Our job is to bring the best value and figure out the right way to deliver services.”

Subteams based around ethics, project management, global knowledge, and client value work with the business and collaborate to intake projects, spot potential conflicts, determine budgets and pricing, and apply appropriate solutions.

“Few firms—and few leaders within them—have embraced the future of legal services as wholeheartedly as Meredith and her Shearman colleagues,” notes Ryan Alshak, CEO of Time by Ping. “Ultimately, it’s the firms with better data (and best people) that will win.”

After her arrival in the spring of 2018, Williams-Range took three months to analyze processes and understand the massive organization. Then, she embarked on an important initiative designed to transform and modernize the firm. The multiyear data program will help differentiate Shearman & Sterling in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.

By integrating data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence into everything Shearman & Sterling does, Williams-Range will help the firm deliver

better results faster and cheaper than ever before. It’s a big task, and thankfully, Williams-Range has full support and cooperation from her counterparts in every part of the C-suite. “An effective data program can’t be owned by one person. It has to become a part of who we are as a law firm. It’s not mine, it’s all of ours,” she says.

The program has three key pillars: data collection, data governance, and data analytics. In collection, Shearman & Sterling captures accurate data with limited human interaction. In governance, the firm encrypts data for use around the world. In analytics, teams use data to predict things like inventory and pricing to make an actual impact to their clients.

Williams-Range and her team launched the program in the fall of 2018 and spent the next two years replacing major systems and building the interfaces that import regulatory and case law information. They rolled everything out during a pandemic, moving an information management system to the cloud while wrapping a new governance policy around what they built.

Early results have been dramatic. Two years ago, Shearman & Sterling had one billion documents and files scattered around the world without any true organization system for easy access. Fifteen percent of

“My team exists only because of how seriously technology is impacting our industry. Our job is to bring the best value and figure out the right way to deliver services.”

MEREDITH WILLIAMS-RANGE

Peter Garritano

Peter Garritano

those documents didn’t have client information attached to them. Now, the firm has twenty-two million documents organized into one searchable database. In a matter of seconds, an authorized user can find any document associated with any client.

This is critical because it allows lawyers to provide better information more quickly. They can also use the information to make key decisions. “If a company is being sued, we know their judge’s history with certain legal matters and how long it will take that matter to go through that specific jurisdiction,” Williams-Range explains.

“Meredith has a well-honed strategic vision for delivering high-value IT initiatives that drive competitive advantage,” notes Neil Araujo, CEO of iManage. “Her move to modernize Shearman & Sterling’s information management capabilities with a unified, secure cloud-based platform empowers the firm’s lawyers to work productively and agilely across the globe, while ensuring the highest level of customer service.”

Few chief knowledge officers can match Williams-Range’s résumé and experience, and she’s using her leadership position to empower and inspire others. “I include as many people as possible when I’m leading teams,” she says. “When you have more voices, and when you have more diverse voices, you’re better together.” She also helped start her firm’s formal mentoring program.

At Shearman & Sterling, 2021 was the year of differentiation. Now, with a new data program in place, Williams-Range and her colleagues are ready to show the world what they can do.

“These tools give us access to legacy information this firm has produced since its inception in 1873,” she says. “We used to offer our individual experience or the collective expertise of our current staff. Now, because of data and technology, we can offer our expertise combined with that of every lawyer that’s worked here for the last 150 years.”

Thomson Reuters is proud to support Meredith Williams-Range, an innovation leader at Shearman & Sterling.

Shearman & Sterling, Meredith, and Thomson Reuters do not have a typical law firm and vendor engagement. It’s a genuine partnership, demonstrated by actions, like codevelopment projects and joint success metrics. It’s our honor to partner with Meredith, as her passion and ability to execute motivates everyone around her, including TR.

Time by Ping is the pioneer in Time Automation, the new approach to timekeeping that turns time into data, and data into insight. Time Automation is smart, driven by AI that knows what’s billable and what’s not. It’s easy, deploying quickly and delighting users from day one. And it’s lucrative, paying for itself in a matter of days with recaptured billable time that would otherwise be lost to the friction and frustration of your current process. Join Meredith Williams-Range and the team at Shearman in forging a better future for your firm with Time Automation. See their stories at timebyping.com

As a leading provider of business information services, Thomson Reuters values opportunities to partner with individuals driven by innovation.

“When you have more voices, and when you have more diverse voices, you’re better together.”

MEREDITH WILLIAMS-RANGE

Just How Much an Oat Can Do

By KC ESPER

An oat can make many things: sticky oatmeal, the crumbly top of an apple crisp, crunchy muesli—the list goes on. In 1994, Rickard Öste expanded the possibilities of what an oat could be even further, creating a creamy oat-based beverage that would eventually serve as the base for lattes, yogurts, ice cream, and more. His creation, Oatly, would take his homeland, Sweden, by storm, inspiring consumers to opt for a milk that was kind not only to lactose-intolerant stomachs but also the world at large.

In 2017, Oatly came to the United States with the intention of expanding this mission. Originally only offered in third-wave coffee shops, Oatly can now be found anywhere from local cafés to nation-wide grocery chains. But that’s not to say its mission is anywhere near completed. The new-old start-up persists as an ever-evolving advocate for sustainable farming practices and plant-based diets. While the environmentally conscious shopper and big-city hipster might already be on board, Oatly seeks to meet people

As executive creative director for Oatly’s North American market, Heidi Hackemer helps stretch the brand’s enviro-focused mission to every corner of the US

Heidi Hackemer Executive Creative Director— North America Oatly

Michelle Keppeler

less accustomed to alternative milks in the middle. That’s where Heidi Hackemer comes in.

Hackemer stands as Oatly’s executive creative director for its North American market. Her journey to the brand was serendipitous, and it started in the way most consumers experience the brand for the first time. She walked to her local coffee shop and ordered Oatly off the menu.

“We were drinking almond milk at the time, but we were worried about the environmental impact of it. We were thinking about making a switch, and ta-da! Oatly shows up,” Hackemer remembers. Two months and a well-stocked fridge later, Oatly reached out to get her help in building out and adapting its creative collateral for American markets. “What they created in Sweden is truly remarkable from a brand standpoint,” she notes. “We’re just putting out into the world what we think is right and has integrity.”

For a company that is hyperfocused on topics like climate change and sustainability, adapting these stances to appeal to a polarized market is no small task. “Americans obviously have a very strong attachment to dairy, both from a use and a John James

psychological perspective. This idea of the American farmer is something that we have in our ethos and mythology as a country,” Hackemer says. “So, it wasn’t about changing the brand when I came here. It’s more just thinking, ‘OK, from a broader standpoint, how does it live in this context?’”

Finding the sweet spot where Oatly can fit in the American ethos relies on meeting consumers where they are rather than forcing them over to one side. But that doesn’t mean Oatly has to do it alone. By using platforms as large as the Super Bowl and partnering with corporations as wide-sweeping as Starbucks, the company is testing how far oat milk can go, branching out from its niche in big cities and becoming popular in rural areas.

Oatly’s 2021 Super Bowl ad—a thirtysecond slot featuring a song titled “Wow No Cow” performed by CEO Toni Petersson— made the brand memorable to football spectators everywhere using a technique that only the savviest viewer could spot: trolling.

“We trolled it by running a spot that we knew was not a Super Bowl-style spot at all, and even before it aired, we came out with a T-shirt that said, ‘I totally hated that Oatly

PUTTING POWER AND PRIVILEGE TO USE

Outside of Oatly, Heidi Hackemer strives to not only be a good steward of the earth but also an advocate for Indigenous peoples. When she was thirty-one, she quit her job, bought a truck, and drove across the United States in pursuit of a greater purpose. “My brother lives in South Dakota, and he said, ‘If you really want to understand America, you need to understand the experience of the Indigenous Americans, because we’ve completely lost their story in mainstream culture,’” she says.

Now, every year—save 2020—Hackemer drives across the country to learn from Indigenous people and do what she can to aid in their liberation. “It’s not my role to go to South Dakota and tell them how they need to change,” she explains. “It’s my role to sit with the elders and the leaders and ask what they need. Then I can figure out how I can channel my own time or other resources to help them do what they need to do.”

“We’re just putting out into the world what we think is right and has integrity.”

HEIDI HACKEMER

commercial,’” Hackemer describes, laughing. “Really understanding how the Super Bowl works and understanding how Twitter works—that if you do something weird, there’s going to be backlash and counter backlash—that’s how we get people talking about us. And that’s exactly what we wanted them to do.”

Needless to say, the commercial was a success.

“It’s inspiring to have a partner in Heidi, whose creative ambitions align with her passion,” says Jamie Sheridan, client business lead at PHD US. “That leads to work that looks beyond ROI to also encompass effecting positive change.”

Now, people across the US are talking about oat milk—and gaining access to it. In early March 2021, Oatly partnered with Starbucks to make that access possible. But the partnership accomplishes so much more than that.

“If we don’t take climate change seriously, and really think about the ways we need to change our systems and our lifestyles, then we as a species and a planet are in trouble,” Hackemer says. “This Starbucks partnership is amazing because it’s very quickly giving millions and millions of people access to a

better alternative to dairy that’s also better for the environment. We always joke about ourselves as punks, and to me, to be able to scale something like that that quickly is the most punk thing you can do.”

Next on Oatly’s Earth-focused agenda is to collaborate with American farmers to grow human-grade oats—a crop that has consistently been overshadowed by soy and corn and one that is currently largely available only in Canada. The goal, Hackemer says, is for Oatly to test out if there is a role for oats to play on US farms as a start to more regenerative practices.

“We’re working on a pilot project right now with farmers in Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota, where we guarantee them a market if they grow a rotation of humangrade oats in addition to their corn and soy,” Hackemer details. “It’s a win for the farmers because they can diversify their revenue, it’s a win for Oatly, and it’s a win for the planet.”

Between Oatly’s captivating ads, its clever branding, and its ability to stretch across the globe without negatively affecting it, the company proves it can tackle a lot at once. But more than anything, it proves we should never underestimate just how much an oat can do.

“Americans obviously have a very strong attachment to dairy, both from a use and a psychological perspective. . . . So, it wasn’t about changing the brand when I came here. It’s more just thinking, ‘OK, from a broader standpoint, how does it live in this context?’”

HEIDI HACKEMER

CONGRATULATIONS TO HEIDI HACKEMER,

CREATIVE DIRECTOR FOR NORTH AMERICA, OATLY, FOR THE FEATURE IN PROFILE MAGAZINE. AN UNDENIABLE LEADER, VALUED PARTNER, AND FRIEND.

A Treasure in Retail

By KEITH LORIA

“I’ve always been a part of iconic brand names that are part of individuals’ daily lives,” says Douglas Brauch, vice president of treasury and insurance at Macy’s. “I wanted to work for a company that I could say I was proud to work for.”

It was at his first job after graduating from the University of Kentucky where Brauch began his twenty-year career within the treasury and insurance function. He joined Chiquita Brands in 2001 and stayed for five years before moving on.

“I started in their financial planning and analysis area, assisting with internal forecasts, board presentations, and strategic projections,” he says. “A position became available in treasury, and what drew me to that side of the business was that treasury engages with all aspects of a company’s operations. It has a broad visibility into all the functions of the business.”

As Macy’s VP of treasury and insurance, Douglas Brauch looks to automation and innovation to not only improve his department but also navigate challenges during the pandemic

The company was going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization at the time, and while Brauch initially thought it was unfortunate to have this happen in his first-ever role, in hindsight he feels it was invaluable experience.

“I had an opportunity to understand how the balance sheet and overall capital structure were reorganized, while also managing the company’s cash through such a significant corporate event was a great experience. I learned a wealth of financial and management lessons through the process,” he recalls.

In 2006, Brauch transitioned to the E.W. Scripps Co., which quickly announced they would be spinning off their cable division into a separate public entity. That provided him with the experience of establishing a treasury department from the beginning in terms of putting new processes and systems in place and hiring a staff.

“The company experienced tremendous growth over the almost ten years I was there, and we completed a number of international acquisitions as well,” Brauch says. “Toward the end of my career there, the media industry started towards a direction of significant consolidation.”

At the time, Macy’s had the need for some treasury department succession planning, and in 2015 Brauch joined the retailer, where he currently serves as its vice president of treasury and insurance. Brauch and his team are responsible for the daily cash, treasury operations, and insurance functions for the entire company.

“On a daily basis, the team ensures we have appropriate liquidity to meet the company’s needs,” he says. “We are evaluating our cash reserves, market conditions, and making determinations of how to invest funds.”

Additionally, his team supports all aspects of the company’s operations, whether that’s improving working capital, issuing letters of credit, overseeing supply chain financing, or account payable discounting programs.

On the insurance side, Brauch’s daily responsibilities include partnering with divisions along with a corporate entity perspective evaluating how to mitigate risk and ensuring there are appropriate insurance policies and coverage.

Obviously, 2020 was an unprecedented time in the world, and retail was hit particularly hard. “As our national portfolio of physical stores were essentially closed overnight, it’s a situation that no disaster

recovery or business resiliency playbook contemplated to that magnitude,” Brauch explains. “I had to rely on past experiences of business transformation and reorganization events, such as the bankruptcy and reorganization spin-off from my previous roles.”

Even before the pandemic, the retail industry was experiencing its own transformation as physical locations were contracting while digital platform volume was increasing.

“When I joined Macy’s, we as a treasury department implemented a treasury platform called Kyriba, which essentially consolidated all of our bank reporting and automated that into a single electronic platform,” Brauch says.

That’s a big difference from how things were done when he joined the company six years ago, when all the cash management and treasury operations were manual and required logging into multiple different banking platforms, printing out bank reports, and entering data into excel spreadsheets.

The treasury team also implemented Institutional Cash Distributors (ICD), an online investment portal that allows the team to compare funds to ensure Macy’s is maximizing returns and provides full visibility into its investments. “From an

“There’s always a continuous goal to drive efficiency with our treasury operations, and we are constantly seeking innovative solutions to reduce expense, enhance decision-making, and ultimately drive improved business results.”

DOUGLAS BRAUCH

Douglas Brauch VP of Treasury & Insurance Macy’s

investment perspective, previously the process required us to pick up the phone and get a hold of traders to make investment trade orders, whether we were purchasing or redeeming funds,” Brauch explains.

“Overall, we had limited automated reporting and processes. The Kyriba workstation and ICD investment portal has eliminated many of the manual steps and assisted in driving efficiency and better decision-making.”

Thanks to the automation and new processes, the team was well-prepared to manage the treasury operations in a remote environment during the pandemic.

In summer 2021, Brauch and the treasury team are still working remotely, and from a business component, he’s seen tremendous progress over the past six months. While many stores were closed last year, there was tremendous growth on the digital side, and that continues to be the case.

“Our results and performance are exceeding expectations,” he notes. “It’s a testament that people want to both get out and still be physically in the stores, while also engaging with Macy’s on our digital platforms.”

That has led to a lot of optimism about the rest of 2021 and beyond, with all things trending in the right direction. “There’s always a continuous goal to drive efficiency with our treasury operations, and we are constantly seeking innovative solutions to reduce expenses, enhance decision-making, and ultimately drive improved business results,” says Brauch, who spoke with Profile in May 2021.

For instance, one innovative improvement that emerged out of the pandemic on the insurance side was the method in which Macy’s completed their annual process of collecting detailed property information on nearly eight hundred locations.

“In partnership with Carrington Risk Consultants, we implemented a virtual survey platform that enables users who are on-site to use an app to enter information and take pictures of features like sprinkler heads, fire extinguishers, or the roof,” Brauch explains. “The app, which eliminates the need for travel and manual procedures

Mariela Oyola-Brauch

to collect critical property information, has been an innovative piece of technology.”

And he expects to continue to use automation and innovation to help leverage his team’s skill sets and contributions towards achieving company’s goals.

Aon congratulates Douglas Brauch for this welldeserved recognition; we are honored to call you a partner and friend. Aon is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement, and health solutions. We empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance. To learn more, visit aon.com.

C2FO is working capital, working for everyone. Our mission is to deliver a future where every company in the world has the capital needed to grow. To learn more, visit C2FO.com.

Kyriba salutes Doug Brauch for his innovative use of finance technology to reduce risk, improve operational efficiencies, accelerate investments, and unlock liquidity as a dynamic vehicle for growth and value creation. Congratulations on your leadership in driving a culture of change at Macy’s. See Kyriba.com for more information.

C2FO is proud to congratulate Doug Brauch, vice president of treasury and insurance at Macy’s, for his incredible accomplishments and innovative leadership amid extraordinary challenges.

Congratulations to you and Macy’s for your recognition by Profile as industry leaders. C2FO is proud to partner with you.

“It’s a testament that people want to both get out and still be physically in the stores, while also engaging with Macy’s on our digital platforms.”

DOUGLAS BRAUCH

Every Seat at the Table

Joyce Rogina uses her nonlinear career path to her advantage to negotiate deals and support students at Barnes & Noble Education

By NATALIE KOCHANOV

Joyce Rogina brought a unique perspective when she first came to the law as a second career back in 1994. As she herself acknowledges, the breadth of her experience—which has only increased since then—allows her to approach her work more holistically.

“I’m the attorney someone hires when they’re looking to view a deal in its legal and business totality because I’ve held virtually every possible seat at the negotiation table,” Rogina says.

Today, Rogina negotiates on behalf of Barnes & Noble Education (BNED), a leading solutions provider for the education industry. As vice president, chief privacy officer (CPO), and associate general counsel, Rogina leverages her expertise to lead key BNED initiatives around privacy and e-commerce. At the same time, she seeks to

Joyce Rogina VP, Chief Privacy Officer, and Associate General Counsel Barnes & Noble Education

use her own professional journey to inspire other people who are navigating similarly nonlinear career paths.

The first in her family to attend college with the help of academic scholarships, Rogina was coding in COBOL and conducting published research on the early use of desktop computing in the workplace while studying computer applications and psychology at the University of Notre Dame in the early 80s. Despite her subsequent success in high-tech sales and business development at information technology pioneer Hewlett-Packard, she began to question her trajectory after seven years at the company.

“My ambition in my high school yearbook was to be a lawyer,” she says. “I realized that I didn’t want to wake up someday and regret not having tried.”

That realization pushed Rogina to apply for and attend law school at New York University. Over the next decade, she not only practiced at national law firm Lowenstein Sandler, but also cofounded a high-tech start-up company and served as a corporate counsel consultant at information provider LexisNexis—all positions that allowed her to use her JD degree. “I love closing technology deals,” she says. “That was where I found the sweet spot.”

Rogina continued to play to her strengths as a negotiator in legal and business roles at Verizon. She also evaluated new business opportunities for the company, which

“I’m the attorney someone hires when they’re looking to view a deal in its legal and business totality because I’ve held virtually every possible seat at the negotiation table.”

JOYCE ROGINA

Courtesy of Joyce Rogina

entered the education business at her suggestion. “I did the initial business case and helped stand up Verizon’s education business in near-record time by closing deals while embedded with the product team,” she confirms.

Her education focus at Verizon helped pave the way for Rogina to join BNED in January 2016. “As part of BNED’s ongoing digital transformation, I initially came in as the technology lawyer,” she explains.

Rogina’s skill set made her a natural fit for CPO, a title that she has held since 2019. “I work with a great BNED team to protect the personal information of all consumers, especially our students,” she says. In addition to aligning BNED’s privacy compliance program with ever-evolving state and federal privacy laws, she relies on technology to manage privacy concerns.

“Joyce is a visionary technology lawyer who relies on technology to do her job more effectively,” says Jerry Ferguson, a partner at the BakerHostetler Digital Assets and Data Management Practice Group. “Navigating compliance with modern privacy laws is a complex task, and Joyce has effectively deployed BakerHostetler’s IncuBaker legal technology consulting group to implement technological solutions that make life easier for her internal clients and better protect the rights of BNED customers.”

Furthermore, Rogina ensures that BNED’s e-commerce sites respect users’ privacy rights, such as when equipping students with education materials on the very first day

of class without requiring the purchase of a physical textbook.

“BNED uses e-commerce to help fulfill our goals of accessibility, affordability, and student success,” she says. “And you can’t separate e-commerce from consumer privacy protection. They are inextricably entwined.”

Rogina also negotiates software-as-aservice contracts and other critical deals with the company’s technology partners.

While a formidable adversary as a leader at BNED, Rogina tries to operate from a place of gratitude and service—a leadership style that carries over into her broader commitment to her faith and giving back. She wants to empower people to forge their own paths, even if the dots making up their career might not seem to connect.

“I want people to understand more employers are valuing the experience of having multiple careers,” she says. “So many women in particular have nonlinear career paths, and I want to give them hope that the dots will connect.”

As her own nonlinear career path progresses, Rogina hopes that her efforts at BNED will reflect her values and her diverse areas of expertise. “My business experience makes me a much better lawyer because I’m focused on helping my clients meet their business objectives while mitigating risk,” she says. “At BNED, our objectives are to meet the evolving needs of the education system and to support this new generation of students.”

No matter her seat at the table, Rogina will see that those goals are met.

“You can’t separate e-commerce from consumer privacy protection. They are inextricably entwined.”

JOYCE ROGINA

A Sixth Sense for Adventure

David Schwartz leans into his legal expertise and business acumen to transform Hudson’s Bay Company and its legal departments

By CHRISTOPHER PALAFOX

David Schwartz has had the perfect career. Need proof? Just ask his daughters.

Schwartz honed his craft at Toys “R” Us for fifteen years before arriving at his current position as executive vice president and general counsel at Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). “For the first twelve years of their lives they had an in on every hot toy,” he recalls. “As they’ve outgrown that, they suddenly discovered Gucci, Prada, and Fendi along with an employee discount at Saks 5th Avenue. They’ve enjoyed my career transitions very much.”

For the past eighteen months, Schwartz has been busy not only meeting the business challenges that COVID-19 created in the retail space but also leading a transformation of HBC into a decentralized organization and establishing six legal departments.

Schwartz credits his experience at Toys “R” Us for prepping him to be able to meet the shifting needs of a global retailer as a pandemic raged on. With a law degree and

David Schwartz EVP and General Counsel Hudson’s Bay Company

an MBA, he joined the toy giant in the early days of e-commerce and helped the company separate from a fraught relationship with Amazon.com Inc.

Eventually, Schwartz was able to expand into a nonlegal role while remaining a general counsel. He was charged with managing different business functions including corporate communications, private label sourcing in China, and product safety.

“Learning how to navigate in different cultural environments was really exciting,” he says. “But after fifteen years, I had gotten to the point where I was ready for a new challenge. Looking at the life of Toys ‘R’ Us, at the time it might’ve been a good time to try something else.”

AT THE CROSSROADS

So in 2016, Schwartz joined Hudson’s Bay Company, which is the oldest continuously operating company in North America. “There’s a spirit of adventure and entrepreneurship that we try to draw upon,” he says. “We challenge our folks to try new things and test new business ideas. I found that exciting.”

When he first joined, Schwartz recognized that the company was functioning at the crossroads of retail and real estate. At first blush, it’s known for iconic, luxury retail brands like Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks OFF 5th, and Hudson’s Bay. “At its core it had an incredibly valuable real estate base and a proven track record for finding creative

ways to take advantage of that—it’s symbiotic,” Schwartz says. “The retail businesses are tenants in the real estate and the better the retail business do, then the more valuable they are as tenants, which increases the value of real estate.”

Schwartz saw an opportunity to unlock value in real estate by making better use

of it as the world of retail was changing. “I could see that the company was at the early stages of a transformation,” he says. “It seemed like a great opportunity.”

On the legal side of things, Schwartz joined a department with redundant functions in Canada and New York that didn’t have great communication and interaction. So he reorganized everything by practice and function area rather than by geography. Now, lawyers on both sides of the border work together, resulting in improved quality of work and opportunities for the lawyers to grow and take on bigger roles.

Today, Schwartz sits at the parent company, helping manage all the assets but each of the businesses have their own legal groups that largely handle their own matters. Tying back into his expertise and love of working internationally, Schwartz was also given a similar opportunity at HBC as the company had ventured into Europe for retail businesses.

“It was right in my wheelhouse of developing joint ventures and managing international relationships,” Schwartz says.

NAVIGATING ROUGH WATERS

“We’ve had quite a year like everyone else in business,” Schwartz says. “We were a publicly traded company in Canada until late February 2020, just weeks before we realized we had a COVID-19 pandemic in North America.”

The company found itself shutting down stores while navigating the early development of a multitude of local, regional, and state regulations on closing stores while trying to take care of its employees. At the same time, Canadian stores were ordered closed for nearly ten months. “It’s a completely dependent food chain,” Schwartz says. “It hurts our suppliers and vendors. You can’t sell inventory the way you planned if the stores are closed.”

But Schwartz and HBC are not standing still. Through all of this, the company just launched a new mobile app for Saks OFF 5th.

“As long-standing outside counsel to HBC, we’ve partnered with David on numerous successful transactions and business challenges,” says Jonah Mann, partner at

“There’s a spirit of adventure and entrepreneurship that we try to draw upon. We challenge our folks to try new things and test new business ideas.”

DAVID SCHWARTZ

In more than 100 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions.

Stikeman Elliott. “At all times, David is focused on practical business advice and driving toward outcomes that are best for HBC.”

Looking to the future, Schwartz is eyeing the real estate v alue tied up in former Lord & Taylor stores. HBC now has about forty locations that can have tremendous redevelopment value.

A large scale internal real estate development group is looking at creating new uses and entitlements on these properties and developing them into things like multiuse locations. “I know they’re convenient locations because we’ve gotten a number of municipalities to use the stores temporarily to distribute COVID-19 vaccines,” Schwartz says.

As the company continues to figure out how it will function in the future, Schwartz has kept his priorities on what makes his job possible: the people around him. “We’ve

www.steptoe.com

had a tremendous amount of corporate transactions, refinancing, and challenges, but ultimately we have a very good group and good camaraderie of dedicated people, and it feels like I have many very longterm relationships.”

One of the accomplishments that Schwartz is most proud of is his role in developing people. “We’ve gone from having a single legal department to six legal departments that operate autonomously where the lead lawyer in those departments is reporting to the lead businessperson rather than to another lawyer,” he says. “That’s unique for both of those people.”

Even now, as his role continues to shift and the uncertainties pile up, Schwartz knows one thing: he wants to stay at HBC. “There’s still such a sense of adventure and entrepreneurship and so much potential that can still be unlocked,” he says.

Steptoe congratulates David J. Schwartz on his career and leadership at Hudson’s Bay.

“We’ve had a tremendous amount of corporate transactions, refinancing, and challenges, but ultimately we have a very good group and good camaraderie of dedicated people.”

DAVID SCHWARTZ

How to Make a Content Deal

At AT&T, Brooke Mallette leads and guides her team through the intricacies of negotiating major entertainment packages

By FREDERICK JERANT

Brooke Mallette didn’t set out for a career in media. But through a combination of good timing, networking, and perseverance, she’s become vice president and associate general counsel at AT&T. With a bachelor’s degree in economics and international affairs and a JD from the University of Colorado–Boulder, Mallette

worked in the resort development industry for two years at the law firm of Jacobs Chase Frick Kleinkopf & Kelley. But the resort industry collapsed, and she found herself jobless.

“It actually was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she recalls. “I really disliked being a lawyer in a firm, and this enabled me to change my direction.”

A friend directed her to Dish Network, where she served as corporate counsel, handling mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, annual reports, and similar natters. A few years later, she moved to the content side of the business, where distribution, licensing, and other complex agreements are hammered out.

“It was a sink-or-swim situation for me,” she says. “The hours were long, and the work was intense, but I found that I was up to it.”

In 2013, she was recruited by DirecTV as its assistant general counsel and just two years later, the company was acquired by AT&T.

Although AT&T had no history of laying off legal department staff, it did demote most of the DirecTV crew while offering a “stay or go” package. Seventy-five percent chose to leave.

Just returning from maternity leave, Mallette found that only one person remained on her team, and she was the last content lawyer. “I had to handle a major content deal by myself,” she says, “and that process can occupy a full team for weeks on end.”

To illustrate, documentation for a recent deal with the Walt Disney Company ran two thousand pages long. Why are content deals so complex? For each provider— Disney, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, broadcast networks, independent channels—AT&T must meticulously negotiate the terms and conditions of carriage deals, videoon-demand, retransmission rights, pay-per-view, copyrights, local channel carriage, and international coverage.

The next eighteen months were intense. Mallette quickly learned to navigate a drastically changed corporate culture, a more hierarchical structure, and even greater pressure to perform than she’d experienced earlier.

Even her communications changed. “My hiring manager at AT&T is a content specialist, and he understands the risks and benefits of the process. We could talk to each other in a kind of shorthand,” she says. “But the general counsel has about three hundred lawyers under him, so I had to learn to select the most relevant information and then summarize it clearly.”

Mallette survived the merger chiefly because of her specialized knowledge. But with only three of her original six DirecTV staff left, rebuilding was essential. Mallette did a lot of the initial vetting and interviewing, then had to train new hires in the intricacies of role.

Some adopted the new knowledge quickly. Others had to be integrated

“In order to follow you, people must trust you. And I’ve built that trust with my staff, because people will work harder if you develop good relationships.”

BROOKE MALLETTE

Venable Celebrates

We applaud Brooke for her dedication, leadership, and innovation, and we are extremely proud of our partnership with AT&T/DIRECTV.

Brooke Mallette

gradually via working with more experienced members on relatively small deals. Mallette says it took two years of training before everyone was up to speed, and her team of fifteen supports content officers and product and marketing clients throughout the company.

“Brooke’s understanding of content distribution matters is second only to her decency and leadership. AT&T is very lucky to have her,” says Thomas Baxter, partner at Venable.

While some executives come by their leadership skills naturally, Mallette had to work at hers. “I’m pretty much an introvert, and in my early days of law school, friends and classmates often claimed I was ‘too quiet’ or ‘too nice’ to be an effective attorney,” she explains. “So, I began building an ‘executive presence’ by taking management classes.

“And I discovered that ‘being nice’ is a good leadership trait,” she continues. “In order to follow you, people must trust you. And I’ve built that trust with my staff, because people will work harder if you develop good relationships.”

Her toolkit includes listening and reacting properly. “When you truly listen, you’re able to really understand their concerns. And you also learn to apply different techniques in different situations. It’s hard to lead without being able to do that,” Mallette says.

At DirecTV, Mallette had her hands in practically every content package. At AT&T,

she had to develop a more hands-off attitude. The company’s perception of a leader is someone who supervises and advises as necessary, but lets the team do the heavy lifting. “It was tough to learn to give up that control,” Mallette says, “but I finally did it. The scope of my job compelled me to.”

A business adage claims that women wait to get into a new role until they’re 110 percent ready; men jump in when they’re 70 percent ready. But that’s not the way at AT&T. “If they think you’re ready to do the job, you do it!” Mallette says. “That’s why I got promoted— my boss believed I had the necessary skills, even though I didn’t.”

And that aversion to risk-taking may be the reason there are relatively few women in high-level positions. “Many times, I’m the only woman in the room,” she says. “It can be intimidating, and it forces me out of my comfort zone.”

But she concedes that one can’t change that environment in just a year or two. It’s a key reason she supports efforts such as the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which advocates for the equal depiction of women in mass media, especially in positions of authority.

“The Institute’s motto is ‘if she can see it, she can be it.’ It’s important for young girls to understand that they can be anything they want to be,” Mallette says. “Their options aren’t necessarily limited to marriage and kids.”

“Many times, I’m the only woman in the room. It can be intimidating, and it forces me out of my comfort zone.”

BROOKE MALLETTE

A New Team in Town

It was the largest city in America without a major-league sports franchise. Now, with help from Chief Legal Officer Eric Hagen, Austin is embracing its new Major League Soccer team.

By ZACH BALIVA

Eric Hagen Chief Legal Officer Austin FC

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. By stepping in as the first in-house lawyer at soccer club Austin FC, Eric Hagen would help launch a franchise and bring major league sports to Austin, Texas, for the first time.

“It was a job I couldn’t say no to,” Hagen says of his decision to leave equity partnership at a big law firm for an assignment loaded with uncertainty. “The chance to launch a professional sports team rarely comes along. I was all in.”

It’s a dream job for a sports fanatic. Hagen, who grew up in a small Iowa farm town and played multiple team sports, remembers piling into the family car to see the Minnesota Vikings. His family had Vikings season tickets since 1963. Experiencing live sports became an important ritual and a way to connect with friends and family.

College took Hagen to California, where he studied at Pepperdine University. There, he joined the lacrosse team and met Anthony Precourt, the future CEO and majority owner of Austin FC. The two quickly became friends, attended graduate school at Dartmouth, and kept in touch as they began their respective careers.

Following a federal judicial clerkship, Hagen focused on intellectual property and commercial disputes at Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles, where he eventually made partner and successfully second-chaired a US Supreme Court case. He later moved to McDermott Will & Emery, where he spent the next decade of his legal career, led the firm’s trade-secret practice, and found time to volunteer with a group of pro bono lawyers representing juvenile prisoners in Uganda.

Meanwhile, Precourt formed Precourt Sports Ventures to investigate ownership in a Major League Soccer (MLS) club. In late 2017, Precourt announced his intention to launch a team in Austin. Soon after, Hagen joined DLA Piper, a global firm with many MLS clubs in its large client roster, where he got a crash course in “soccer law.” There, he began to formally advise Precourt in laying the groundwork for the new club.

Philip Edsel

In 2018, Precourt Sports Ventures announced a deal to build a privately financed, state-of-the-art $260 million, 20,500-plus-seat soccer-specific stadium in Austin. Precourt also brought in several local investors, including actor Matthew McConaughey as the club’s “Minister of Culture.” And in January 2019, MLS officially announced that Austin FC would become the league’s newest club and would start play in 2021.

Hagen shortly thereafter moved his family from Los Angeles to Austin and set up shop in DLA Piper’s Austin office. In October 2019, he joined the club fulltime as its chief legal officer and set out to handle all the complicated legal aspects of building a stadium and training facility— all while signing players, hiring employees, engaging civic partners, attracting sponsors, negotiating TV rights, selling tickets, and creating a fan base.

Hagen and his colleagues quickly turned their attention to an important key to success: founding-level partnerships.

“Community is everything in soccer. Getting the right partners is important because we want partners who connect with our community and resonate with our supporters,” Hagen explains.

Among the many iconic Austin brands that have partnered with the club are its jersey sponsor YETI, the naming-rights partner for its $45 million training facility St. David’s Healthcare, and its stadiumnaming-rights partner Q2, a young and successful local fintech company.

Q2 Stadium blends the best design features from the latest American soccer venues with special touches that connect with the city and that will help fans cope with the Texas summer heat, Hagen says, adding that Q2 Stadium will also host tournaments, concerts, and other public events.

Starting a new sports franchise in a major city is always a weighty endeavor, but the COVID-19 pandemic and an unprecedented ice storm made the effort especially challenging. “It’s been an interesting time to have a business model based on getting

“It was a job I couldn’t say no to. The chance to launch a professional sports team rarely comes along. I was all in.”

ERIC HAGEN

large groups of people together,” Hagen jokes. “But we persevered.”

While two expansion teams—Charlotte and St. Louis—tabled their launch plans, Austin FC kept going. It signed a talented head coach in Josh Wolf, signed top international and domestic players, built a top-ranked youth development academy (Hagen has a son who plays striker for Austin FC Academy), hired a well-known play-by-play commentator, sold out of season tickets several months in advance, and built a brand with widespread buzz.

Excitement was brewing in anticipation of the home opener on June 19, 2021. Although Austin FC lost its first match against Los Angeles FC, Hagen considered it a win. While large groups of supporters gathered at watch parties back in Austin

to celebrate the team’s long-awaited debut, many traveled to Banc of California stadium to see it live—including Hagen. As he entered the stadium, he looked up at the sky. A plane flying overhead carried a banner, paid for by devoted supporters, reading: “ Vamos ATX. ¡Verde hasta la muerte! ” (Bright verde is the club’s primary color.)

A week later in Denver, Hagen witnessed history when he saw Austin FC score its first goals in a comeback win over the Colorado Rapids. He and his front-office colleagues celebrated late into the evening with the hundreds of supporters who traveled from Austin. Within hours, he was on a 6 a.m. flight back to Texas with still much work to be done through the rest of the team’s inaugural season.

Philip Edsel

“It’s been an interesting time to have a business model based on getting large groups of people together. But we persevered.”

ERIC HAGEN

“Universities are Living, Learning Organisms”

Jonathan Alger took a rather unconventional path to the presidency of Harrisonburg, Virginia–based institution James Madison University (JMU).

By CLINT WORTHINGTON

His first foray into higher education was as an attorney-advisor for the US Department of Education, then as associate counsel for the American Association of University Professors. As an assistant general counsel for the University of Michigan, he worked on a couple landmark cases on diversity in admissions that went to the US Supreme Court.

After seven and a half years as vice president and general counsel at Rutgers, Alger became JMU’s sixth president in 2012.

That background evinces Alger’s staunch commitment to servant leadership, which has been a pillar of his tenure since he took office at JMU. “How do I enable and empower students to be the change they want to see in

Jonathan Alger, James Madison University’s sixth president, wants to turn the Virginiabased school into a national leader

the world?” he says of his priorities as president—not just change that will happen in the future, but what people can do right now.

That perspective stems back all the way to his first days at JMU, where he went on a listening tour of the campus and at events across the country with alumni and internationally. This gave him vital feedback on what makes the university special and how he can make it a rewarding place to live, learn, and work.

“Listening is often one of the most undervalued leadership skills and attributes,” Alger says. “But it’s really important, especially here in the twenty-first century.”

As such an active servant leader on campus, Alger has spearheaded several

initiatives to help continue elevating JMU’s profile from a smaller teachers’ college to one of the most progressive, highly engaged institutes of higher learning in the South.

Chief among them was building on the university’s existing efforts to promote active learning. JMU had already been fostering high-impact learning practices for years, but Alger worked to coordinate these initiatives to maximize student engagement.

Alger created an engagement advisory group to perform an assessment focused on engaged learning, as well as civic and community engagement—“not just what happens inside the classroom, but outside the classroom as well,” he explains.

Jonathan Alger President James Madison University

Courtesy of James Madison University

From there, they set measurable goals to increase access to undergraduate research opportunities, study abroad, and more for students of all different backgrounds and majors.

But active learning involves engaging teachers as well as students, which led Alger to start a program called Engagement MiniGrants, a partnership with JMU’s Faculty Senate to fund faculty proposals for creative teaching measures or other methods of student engagement.

“This allowed us to recognize and acknowledge faculty members with creative ideas, and let them get those ideas off the ground across the curriculum,” Alger notes.

Diversity and inclusion have also been major components of Alger’s platform as president, even before the George Floyd protests initiated system-wide reappraisal of racial equity across a number of institutions in 2020. This is especially challenging for JMU, which serves a majority-white population in rural Virginia and has its own complicated history with race.

In February, the university’s board of visitors voted to rename three buildings that were named for Confederate leaders—including renaming one for JMU’s first Black student and graduate, Dr. Sheary Darcus Johnson.

Alger’s work extends beyond the aesthetics and optics of JMU’s demographics,

including major projects to improve racial and socioeconomic diversity among the university’s twenty-two thousand students.

One model he brought to JMU is the Valley Scholars Program, a partnership with local school districts that seeks out students with academic potential who would be first-generation college students and provides positive intervention and reinforcement. The program offers college prep courses and visits to the campus; if the students’ grades stay high enough, they get a full-ride scholarship to JMU if they choose.

It’s all to provide access and opportunity to students who wouldn’t otherwise have them, Alger says.

While these efforts go a long way to addressing the systemic inequalities that are part of JMU’s history, Alger notes that this is just the beginning of a longer journey to make the university truly equitable. “Part of what I’ve tried to help our community understand is that it’s a marathon and not a sprint,” he stresses. “You need a multifaceted approach; there isn’t one silver bullet that takes care of all the issues.”

Like most institutes of higher learning, JMU had to adjust quickly to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to immediately pivoting to remote learning, Alger appointed two different working groups to address, respectively, the immediate concerns of the pandemic (such

“Listening is often the most undervalued leadership skills and attributes. But it’s really important, especially here in the twenty-first century.”

JONATHAN ALGER

as public health, budgets, and technology support) and the big-picture innovations that would likely carry through afterwards. This includes things like online counseling, telehealth services, new forms of community and global engagement, and even a fleet of meal-delivering robots to provide contactless food delivery.

Between improving students’ ability to learn, giving students of color greater access and opportunities at JMU, and adjusting to the remote challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alger is working hard to elevate his institution into a model for what other schools can do to address these pressing issues.

“Universities like JMU are living, learning organisms,” Alger explains. “We adapt and change and grow and evolve.”

As a top twenty school in the Princeton Review for Best Campus Food, JMU Dining o ers a unique and exciting dining program that nourishes the lives of students at James Madison University.

ACCOLADES

Virginia Green Certified

Green Restaurant Association Certified

#8 2021 Best College Food in America by Niche #12 Best Campus Food by Princeton Review

#4 50 Best College Cafeterias by Best Value Schools

#16 25 Best College Dining Halls by College Consensus

#10 Best College Dining Hall by Best Colleges

#8 Best College Food by Food Service Director Magazine

dining@jmu.edu

www.jmu.edu/dining

JMU Dining is proud to serve the JMU community in partnership with President Alger.

“There isn’t one silver bullet that takes care of all the issues.”

JONATHAN ALGER

Playing Defense

By KEITH LORIA

In 2020, the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs won its first Super Bowl since 1970. The team returned to the Big Game in 2021, losing a tough battle to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But the circumstances for the team changed a great deal in the year between Super Bowl appearances. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in drastic changes for the NFL at large.

Thankfully, Jeffrey Miller, the Kansas City Chiefs’ vice president of security, helped sort out the new rules and guidelines to make Arrowhead Stadium safe for its players, employees, and fans.

Those behind the scenes of the Kansas City franchise implemented strict protocols and got everyone to operate under the same mindset. That action resulted in the Chiefs’

When COVID-19 tried to intercept the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2021 season, Jeffrey Miller, vice president of security, made sure the game could go on

stadium becoming the first in North America to welcome fans throughout the season.

Miller credits his twenty-five-year tenure in law enforcement and his previous experience as senior vice president and chief security officer for the NFL with helping him contribute to the collective strategy to protect everyone. When the pandemic hit, work needed to be done to get new protocols in place. And even though the NFL season hadn’t started, there was plenty to do.

Miller and other members of the executive leadership team had to look at how the Chiefs organization would be impacted in the short and long term. Initially, they sent everyone home, with plans to get people back in a few weeks.

“Once we came to grips that this is the environment we are in, we developed a communications plan and limited the access to the facility to only essential personnel,” Miller explains. “We developed entry protocols to include temperature screenings and a medical questionnaire, as well as a custom app and an infectious disease emergency response plan.”

Team meetings and training took place virtually at first, while the stadiums underwent changes. Plexiglass was added to the locker rooms and stadium operations were updated.

“As we were getting closer to training camp, we knew if we were going to play football on the field, we couldn’t just train virtually, and we knew we had to create a safe environment to practice and to hold games,” Miller explains. “We had to space

people out and hold team meetings with PPE in place and cleaning crews repeatedly cleaning all common surfaces.”

Players had to wear special devices that tracked their proximity to others, so if someone was exposed to COVID-19, they would know who was in close contact to isolate and limit the spread.

“We also had to simultaneously prep on how we were going to hold games,” Miller

recounts. “We were trying to do this with the best information we had, even if things were being ironed out at the league level at the last minute.”

As the defending champions, the Chiefs were scheduled to host the season’s kick-off game, but they couldn’t prepare vendors and people the same way they normally would. So all departments had to come up with a proposal that made sense.

“As we were getting closer to training camp, we knew if we were going to play football on the field, we couldn’t just train virtually, and we knew we had to create a safe environment to practice and to hold games.”

JEFFREY MILLER

Jeffrey

Miller VP of Security

Kansas City Chiefs

Steve Sanders

“We were also working with the health department to determine what the rules were going to be for using our stadium, potentially with fans,” Miller recalls. “With the size of the rosters we have and players going home every night, there was more risk. We ultimately received approval to fill 22 percent of our seating capacity.”

After much consideration, the team came up with a pod system and figured out how to limit access to the aisles, zip tying certain seats so they wouldn’t be available. One of Miller’s ideas was to use as much space on the plaza as possible for fans to safely queue on approach to the entry gates. The club also eliminated spaces in the parking lot so people could tailgate safely away from other groups. All people in the stadium were required to wear masks too.

“One of the things I recommended, and the club accepted, was we would not allow any bags unless it was medically necessary,” he says. “We wanted to reduce the time that security would have to be hands-on and close to fans as they passed through the security screening process.”

Although the city’s medical director was skeptical about fans attending, the Chiefs were able to safely host upward of sixteen thousand fans per game. In the end, there were no cases traced to exposure at any of the games.

With lessons learned from last year, the Kansas City franchise is once again preparing for another season.

“Right now, we are going back to the tiered system and testing regimen because we haven’t defeated the virus,” Miller says. “The players and staff are all encouraged to get vaccinated if they haven’t been already, and we recently held a vaccination day for all players, families,and staff.”

One difference about next season is that Miller will be working mostly remotely from his home in San Diego and flying in for key games and events. But he has full trust in the organization’s leaders and team when it comes to keeping everyone safe. The hope is that by the time the season begins, protocols can relax a bit, stadiums can be full, and the Chiefs can focus on trying to qualify for its third-straight Super Bowl.

It has been a pleasur e and honor to wor k under your leader ship.

Fr om your friends at Landmar k Event

“We were also working with the health department to determine what the rules were going to be for using our stadium, potentially with fans. With the size of the rosters we have and players going home every night, there was more risk.”

JEFFREY MILLER

A Season on Ice

Leah Pitzenberger brings HR excellence to the Minnesota Wild in its most difficult period to date

By BILLY YOST

Leah Pitzenberger talks a lot about the seasons of her career. It’s not a traditional way of relaying one’s experiences, but it’s incredibly effective. The vice president and head of human resources and organizational development at the NHL’s Minnesota Wild has been through a few already.

Pitzenberger’s seasons have included supply chain HR as well as diversity and inclusion for Target, which has a workforce of thousands. Her seasons have included a smaller tech company, extensive international travel, and the push-pull of trying to raise her two small sons while in a role whose commute included a weekly flight from Lincoln, Nebraska, back home to Minnesota.

The VP’s latest season is now icy, but for all the right reasons. Pitzenberger has found the right crew, despite taking on the role two months before the US shut down to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The HR leader who had never seen a Wild game—let alone any hockey game—found an organization that cares about its community, its employees, and its culture in the way one imagines a hockey team should.

The Wild retained Sue Bergstrom, president of HR Connection, to find the organization’s first executive-level HR leader. “I meet with HR leaders Monday through Friday, every week of the year,” Bergstrom says. “Leah immediately stood out as someone who could provide the Wild organization with the creativity, energy, and humility that owner Craig Leipold and others on the leadership team had described as their ideal executive HR leader.”

Pitzenberger says learning the business of hockey has provided its fair share of challenges, but those challenges are vital to take on because the spirit of the hockey team is exactly what makes it such a unique place to be.

“The grit and determination of the Wild organization feels really similar to the spirit of the team,” Pitzenberger explains. “We don’t just want to be good; we want to be great. We want to be an amazing employer and an amazing hockey team.”

While Pitzenberger’s early tenure and the challenges that the pandemic brought was chock-full of difficult decisions, she’s excited about the opportunity this postpandemic season presents. “It’s an opportunity to revolutionize our business and the business of people,” she says, “and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

“People have different expectations now, and it’s our goal not just to meet them but to exceed them,” Pitzenberger continues. “We want people to see us and seek us out for employment. To do that, you have to be brave and innovative.”

Pitzenberger shares that they needed to strip things back to the foundation—who they are, what they do, and, most important, who they needed to be moving forward. “I have a strong bias toward action,” Pitzenberger explains, “but this isn’t something

Leah Pitzenberger

VP and Head of HR & Organizational Development Minnesota Wild Rick Orndorf

that can be done top-down. We began by asking our team to share what was on their minds and hearts. They are central to our reinvention, and their voice was critical in identifying which components of our culture were serving us well and which needed to evolve to usher us forward.”

So that’s exactly what they did. In an industry that had been decimated by the pandemic, they are beginning a journey toward a more innovative business model and embedded that creativity in their new cultural values.

“We knew that we couldn’t just iterate on our existing processes,” she explains. “The pandemic has shifted the ground for everyone, and we needed to begin again by building a culture and HR processes that serve the organization we want to be instead of the organization we’ve always been.”

This new season has focused on four key plays that Pitzenberger believes are the company’s differentiator. “Leadership alignment has been a priority,” the VP says. “We all need to be on the same page, playing from the same playbook, or we won’t be successful. Period.” From refreshing company values to identifying key initiatives and success metrics, leaders worked collaboratively to build an innovative and exciting strategy.

The next two focuses went hand in hand: creating a culture focused on candor as well as learning and growth. “These are a bit of a longer play for us and will take us more than a year to master, but we know they will become our secret sauce,” Pitzenberger says. “Employees are looking for experiences grounded in learning, and we believe they deserve a voice—in our culture and in our business—so candor will be critical.”

Lastly, the VP shares that everything is grounded in her team’s mantra: make HR easy. “I think we’ve made HR overly complicated and unapproachable. We need to unwind that,” she says. “Everything we do should be simple, easy to understand, and accessible to our employees. They want to be involved; we should encourage that in any way we can.”

While this season is just beginning, it’s proving to be an exciting one. “We’re very early in this journey, but we’re excited about the potential these changes bring,” Pitzenberger says. “We believe they will become differentiators for our organization—both as a winning team and a winning employer. It’s an opportunity to truly go from good to great, both on and off the ice.”

It certainly has been a baptism by fire or ice, but Pitzenberger, and the Wild, are just getting started.

“We don’t just want to be good; we want to be great. We want to be an amazing employer and an amazing hockey team.”

LEAH PITZENBERGER

“Having a small group of peers through HR Connection that not only understand the challenges of being a senior leader, but also have the ability to share insights and experiences that can focus my efforts has been life-giving. In every meeting, we share opportunities, difficulties, ideas, energy… and laughter. But, most importantly, I’ve gained group of life-long friends and colleagues whose care and support I value deeply.”

- Leah Pitzenberger, Minnesota Wild VP and Head of HR

Congratulations to HR Connection Member Leah Pitzenberger for your recognition in Profile

Sue Bergstrom, President

Small groups for HR leaders to connect, learn & be inspired.

A Bright Picture Ahead

Treasurer Matthew Ebersold helps transform finance and ensure a successful future for Eastman Kodak

By KEITH LORIA

Matthew Ebersold admittedly has always been a left-brained person. “I’ve always been drawn to math and science and things of that nature,” shares Ebersold, who is treasurer at Eastman Kodak. “I went to SUNY Cortland College, and I really didn’t have a path to follow. I started off with economics as my major and after a few years of working more than I was actually going to school, I came home without a degree.”

He transitioned to St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, and pursued accounting as well economics. The dual degree landed him a job out of college at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he stayed for almost a decade. He moved up the ranks quickly to a senior manager position and had a two-year tour in PwC’s national office.

His last position before Kodak was in Cincinnati, but his family was itching to go

Matthew Ebersold Treasurer Eastman

back home. Ebersold started looking for a way back to Rochester and found a position at Kodak as an assistant controller, doing technical accounting research and working in the M&A area.

Shortly after joining the company, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Ebersold spent most of his time on the carve-out financial statements for businesses the company ultimately sold as part of its emergence from bankruptcy.

“Fortunately, an opening came up in treasury in 2013, and I started working on the capital markets side,” he explains. “I kept gaining experience across all aspects of what we do for Kodak with treasury, which covers cash management, debt, insurance risk management—and I took on more and more responsibility.”

He continued to climb the ladder and in 2019 was named corporate treasurer of Eastman Kodak. He was only in the job for a few months when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“It was a difficult time to take over the role because three months after taking the job, we had this crisis, and the company has continued to burn cash over the last decade or more,” Ebersold explains. “We were really getting to the point where we couldn’t continue to spend without finding other ways to generate cash, so it was certainly a tough time.”

The response to COVID-19 required drastic cash-conserving efforts, including the majority of employees going on furlough or taking a temporary pay cut.

“We cut costs back on spend for inventory and wherever we could,” Ebersold notes. “As we got to December, both of our debt facilities were coming due in 2021— our ABL credit agreement and our Series A preferred shares. We had to address both to make sure that the company had viability going forward and spent about three months

Courtesy of Eastman Kodak

Kodak

on that project. We came out with a really, really good result.”

Kodak’s refinancing fundamentally is a game changer. CEO Jim Continenza, CFO David Bullwinkle, General Counsel Roger Byrd, and Ebersold, among others, worked together to negotiate the new financing. Kodak entered into a $275 million term loan credit facility, issued $25 million of convertible notes, and also issued $10 million of common shares to Kennedy Lewis Investment Management, which led both the term loan and the convertible note.

“In order to address the Series A preferred shares, we took $100 million of the proceeds we got from Kennedy Lewis and redeemed $100 million of the Series A preferred shares,” he says.

The company exchanged the remaining $100 million of Series A preferred shares for $100 million of Series B preferred shares with Southeastern Asset Management and also issued $100 million of Series C preferred shares to Grand Oaks Management. Lastly, the company amended and extended a $90 million ABL credit facility and entered into a new $50 million cash collateralized letter of credit facility.

One of Ebersold’s key initiatives while he was assistant treasurer was leading a project to institute a new treasury management system. Kodak had used Quantum for more than fifteen years, but it wasn’t implemented consistently across all international sectors, and the company didn’t have true insight into the overall cash and positioning around the globe.

“We were doing a lot of manual work through Excel, and reporting that came up on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis from our regional treasury teams,” Ebersold recalls. “We looked at a few different treasury management systems and ultimately decided that Kyriba served us the best and moved ahead with them. We now have a system where I can review daily and see cash positioning around the globe.”

As the company shrank over the years, so did Kodak’s treasury department. Now, only Ebersold and one other person support insurance and risk management activities.

“With both the treasury management system and insurance and risk management, what we’re trying to do is automate as much as we can,” he explains. “That’s not always easy from an insurance perspective, but we’ve put in some different practices to use Excel to allow our teams around the globe to give us the information we need in order to renew our global policies as seamlessly as possible.”

From a financing perspective, Kodak now has a healthy cash balance in the US and globally is close to $400 million in sales.

“The company is now in growth mode,” Ebersold says. “The expectation is that we’re going to start to invest to drive growth. We now have the cash that we didn’t have before to invest in our growth strategies and create returns. The refinancing provided the breathing room over the next five years to implement changes to make us a successful company long-term.”

“We were really getting to the point where we couldn’t continue to spend without finding other ways to generate cash, so it was certainly a tough time.”

MATTHEW EBERSOLD

Positive Energy

Salah Gamoudi helps make an instant CFO impact at SandRidge Energy

By WILL GRANT

The beginning of the 2020s was off to a wild start for SandRidge Energy. The Oklahoma-based company that operates in both Oklahoma and Kansas has sold its corporate headquarters, while also producing returns for its shareholders that might leave investors who didn’t get in early feeling left out in the cold.

In September 2020, Sandridge announced the completion of the sale of its thirty-story office tower and annex that included parking and ancillary use in Oklahoma City’s downtown for $35.4 million. The eleventh-tallest building in Oklahoma had played home to SandRidge since 2007, including a $100 million renovation of the tower along with four other Sandridge buildings.

At the same time, SandRidge’s share price has soared higher than an oil geyser.

Over the last year, the price upped a staggering 139 percent. The confidence of a strong year likely paved the way for SandRidge’s latest acquisition.

In April 2021, SandRidge announced the acquisition of all the overriding royalty interest assets of SandRidge Mississippian Trust. “Buying in the ORRIs from SDT will add to our PDP reserves and improve our netbacks and cash flow in wells that we already operate for the most part,” President and CEO Carl Giesler said in a statement “This acquisition is a good example of the relatively low-capital, high-return, quick-payback, ‘small-ball’ investments that the Board and management are making to increase shareholder value realization from its asset base.”

While the changes for SandRidge point in a positive direction, it has no doubt been a challenging year for Salah Gamoudi. The senior vice president and CFO arrived in

his post after establishing a strong résumé in the energy space. Gamoudi amassed increasingly larger roles at Jones Energy, Remora Petroleum, Glacier Oil & Gas, and Lime Rock Resources. Prior to entering the energy space, Gamoudi worked in auditor roles at Deloitte and Ernst & Young.

Gamoudi has managed to hit the ground running in his new role. The CFO oversees investor relations, reporting, tax, compliance, strategy, acquisition development and marketing as well as operations strategy. Since beginning in April 2021, he has endeavored to help SandRidge’s cost structure reduction efforts as well as continued efforts to rightsize SandRidge for an always shifting marketplace.

Those cost-saving measures have included outsourcing some of SandRidge’s IT partners, a successful effort that saved the company $4.2 million in savings on a single project.

The financial team itself is incredibly lean. At present, there is only a controller, a director of financial analysis, and a director of finance. All back-office positions, including accounting, administration, and HR roles, were outsourced by outside vendors. The move made sense in terms of economy of scale and an outside firm’s ability to handle the work versus an in-house staff.

The challenge of coming into an organization and immediately making significant financial decisions is one Gamoudi faces daily. With the variety of responsibilities

under his purview, the CFO has had to grow quickly in a very short period of time while relying on those with more institutional knowledge to help him make the most well-informed decisions possible.

To combat the stress that big changes can bring, Gamoudi places an emphasis on health and fitness. That includes more than just diet, exercise, and getting enough sleep. It’s a lifestyle and routine that the SVP believes may seem challenging to adopt initially but is absolutely crucial to helping his body catch up to his mind.

While cost saving and outsourcing can be a difficult part of the position, Gamoudi is also passionate about the role of his team in helping move SandRidge forward. The CFO believes that leaders need to work both ways: while employees may be reporting to him, it’s also incumbent on him to report back clearly and openly with those same employees.

Gamoudi says that it’s imperative for him to consider the career trajectories and ambitions for all of those that report up to him and to be supportive in any way that he can.

There is no doubt that 2020 is a year that Gamoudi won’t forget. He was welcomed into his biggest role to date via Zoom but has demonstrated a clear willingness to get down to work quickly and effectively regardless of where he is working from. SandRidge may be down one skyscraper, but that seems to be the only loss on the company’s sheets this year.

STRENGTH IN DEI

ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

MELODY POHLA

Melonie Parker, Google | P108

Ali Seals, Weyerhaeuser | P112

Chantel Terrell, Savage X Fenty | P118

Susan Bridges Gilder, Beiersdorf | P122

Towanna Tindall, Trulite Glass & Aluminum Solutions | P126

Kim Lazerus, Maverik | P130

Donovan Mattole, Brenntag | P134

Susie Long, Bridgestone Americas | P138

Renata Ribeiro, Carnival Corporation | P142

How nine leaders have made diversity, equity, and inclusion foundational in their work

NO

Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker speaks to the Google’s ongoing commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging

GOOGLER LEFT OUT

By Billy Yost

Melonie Parker Chief Diversity Officer Google

MELONIE PARKER SAYS THAT NOWHERE IN THE “CHILD-SIZED DREAMS” OF HER YOUTH COULD SHE IMAGINE THE IMPACT AND RESPONSIBILITY SHE CURRENTLY HOLDS AS GOOGLE’S CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER.

Parker and her brother, children of a bank teller mother and factory worker father, were the first in their family to attend college. Silicon Valley is a long way from the predominantly Black and working-class neighborhood in which Parker grew up, in High Point, North Carolina. Now Parker is helping shape diversity efforts for 140,000 employees at one of the most important companies in technology.

Parker’s professional growth was largely focused through Lockheed Martin, where her promise was recognized early and was fast-tracked straight into a talent program for future leaders. She was promoted repeatedly, building out expertise in human resources, workforce, strategy, and a bevy of skill sets before moving to Sandia National Laboratories as vice president of HR and communication.

In 2017, Parker joined Google, where she has helped spearhead high-profile and highly transparent pilots and initiatives to not only source new and diverse talent but also make every single Googler feel like they are where they belong.

Parker spoke with Profile about Google’s ongoing commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Weinberg-Clark Photography

publicly dedicated Google to these efforts in June 2020?

I am so excited and delighted by the work that our Black Leadership Advisory Group and Black Googler Network have done

Black community.

We had an incredible Juneteenth in 2021. We educated through celebration and focused on equity across the world. Erykah Badu made an appearance and performed as well, and we conducted a

What does Google’s commitment to belonging look like from your perspective and what have those efforts looked like over the last year?

We have made a lot of headway this year, due in part to our incredible partner john a. powell, who leads the UC Berkeley Othering & Belonging Institute. We’ve really tackled belonging from the perspective of the primal fear of not feeling like you are part of the group.

Because people cling to what’s most familiar, that usually equates to people who are more like you. We’ve taken an intentional, almost scientific approach to how we look at belonging.

I like to say that our goal for culture here is “No Googler Left Out.” We want everyone here to feel valued, supported, heard, and recognized for their contributions.

We’re continuing that journey because it really feeds into our racial equity commitment and is part of a number of the pilots that we’re currently running.

around DEI and belonging looked like throughout your career?

That’s true. I certainly have, but I have worked really hard to change my thinking, and I’ve encouraged my daughter to do the same. I want to be careful that I’m not walking into a room as “the Black woman” or putting on a moniker that will make me any less than my full self. We don’t have to put labels on ourselves. I want to show up as Melonie, with full rights and privileges. I can’t do anything about labels that other people may put on me, but I can control how I think about it. That’s really important in how we’re leading at Google and how we’re changing the face of who sits in what roles.

Here I have the opportunity to amplify voices to our most senior leaders across the company, and that is a responsibility I take incredibly seriously. That responsibility also encompasses my personal values of empathy and curiosity, as well as the willingness to put myself in someone else’s shoes.

Weyerhaeuser’s Ali Seals brings compassion, empathy, and support to his in-house team while fighting for greater representation

By Billy Yost | Portraits by David Boyd

“I WILL HAVE THEIR BACK”

ALI SEALS IS NAMED AFTER ONE OF THE GREATEST ATHLETES AND ACTIVISTS OF ALLTIME, MUHAMMAD ALI. It was an intentional choice made by parents who were active in the fight for civil rights. The namesake of the greatest boxer who ever lived seems to more float like a butterfly than sting like a bee. His personality is disarmingly downto-earth, and his presence, even over the phone, denotes the kind of leader who will tell you which way the wind is blowing.

The senior counsel and legal team director at Weyerhaeuser is a Black man in a profession that has been acknowledged by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as one of the least diverse jobs there is when it comes to minorities and people of color. His company, Weyerhaeuser, has a 120year history in the timber industry, and is based in Seattle—neither the industry nor the location are known for well-documented multicultural representation.

Seals’s hiring eight years ago had nothing to do with optics or initiatives. That can be chalked up to his empathetic and supportive leadership, significant real estate experience paired with legal expertise, and an ambition to do a job to the best of its ability that almost burned the lawyer out.

It took an award to finally get Seals to take a moment to breathe.

HOW MANY WAYS?

After winning Weyerhaeuser’s “Truly Great” award that goes to ten people a year in a company of ten thousand and after being selected for the company’s NextGen program for future leaders of the company, Seals had a moment of clarity. The program provided a business mentor/coach for the enrollees, and Seals had the opportunity to pair with an experienced Black business coach.

“I intentionally sought her out because I wanted to talk to her about some of the unique challenges that we deal with, both being people of color,” Seals remembers.

“I was telling her about how challenging the volume of in-house work can be. When she tried to tell me that I needed to learn to take more time for myself, I just told her I

GET STUFF DONE

Seals speaks about his own team glowingly. The team refers to itself as Team “GSD (Get Stuff Done)” There was an initial challenge, however. Seals leads an all-female team of lawyers who are all experts in their areas of practice. “The optics around one guy supervising a team of five female attorneys are not awesome,” he explains.

That’s where Seals’s honesty and transparency shined. “The first thing I shared with the team is that I’m one of the few people of color in management at the company, and if a leadership position is something that they are striving for, I will do all I can to support them and help to make that a reality,” Seals says.

“I also told them that while I haven’t shared their experiences as women, I have been the only person like me in a room,” he continues. “I’ve had some awful experiences based on the color of my skin and the fact that my name sounds Islamic.

If you’re a minority, woman, or other underrepresented class, chances are you’ve had some kind of problematic interaction either at work or away from the office, and I want them to know that they can talk to me. I will have their back. And I will work to make their work environment as

comfortable as possible and make sure they have the resources they need to excel in their practice.”

The senior counsel says he is energized by the progress Weyerhaeuser has recently made on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The company started an inclusion council in 2019 that includes hourly and salaried employees and helps shape and implement the company’s DEI goals. Weyerhaeuser is also conducting an external review of its policies and practices to better understand and identify opportunities for improvement.

That said, Ali is quick to point out that the forest products industry as a whole has a considerable amount of work to do when it comes to being more progressive in representation and diversity efforts. He doesn’t pull punches, and he knows that a great deal has to continue to change in order to find more parity.

That’s the thing about Seals. He shares Ali’s penchant for telling it like it is, all while performing at the top of his game.

Schwabe is a trusted firm in the natural resources industry, offering personal attention and strategic legal guidance to a broad range of businesses, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Learn more at: schwabe.com

“I WANT THEM TO KNOW THAT THEY CAN TALK TO ME. I WILL HAVE THEIR BACK. AND I WILL WORK TO MAKE THEIR WORK ENVIRONMENT AS COMFORTABLE AS POSSIBLE AND MAKE SURE THEY HAVE THE RESOURCES THEY NEED TO EXCEL IN THEIR PRACTICE.”

Chantel Terrell reflects on the mentorship, professional connections, and empowering experiences that have defined her success as a leader of color

By Melaina K. de la Cruz

FEARLESS CONFIDENT INCLUSIVE

“YOU MAKE IT LOOK TOO EASY.”

Chantel Terrell, vice president of global sourcing and production at Savage X Fenty, admits she was a bit stunned when her mentor told her this on one particularly frustrating day. After all, being responsible for the popular lingerie company’s distribution, sourcing, and production strategies is no simple task. The challenges are inevitable, and as her mentor put it, results are expected. Problems are what get people’s attention.

“After that conversation I began to focus on building cross-functional relationships that were more than tactical,” Terrell recalls. “Internal partnerships are just as important as the external partnerships. My overall leadership style started to take shape after that lesson.”

Terrell says that her mentor made a point to invest in her when she was still a junior member of the sourcing team. “He noticed my work ethic and potential . . . Working with him showed me how valuable it was to have an advocate. He is invested in me as a person and as a female leader.”

And today, the VP strives to do this for her own team, empowering them and setting a standard for personal growth, something that she herself is passionate about. She keeps busy with career sem -

inars, networking, and guiding her own mentees. The latter may be the most important to her, as she credits the guidance she received from mentors as pivotal to her career development.

“ This is always the opportunity to be able to look at [myself] from someone else’s perspective and to [identify] the areas that I need to improve and can do better,” she explains.

Career coaches may advise newly minted professionals to seek out high-level connections within their industry to get a foot in the door, but Terrell sees it differently. “It’s important to build that network of people who you can go to for different things,” she affirms. “It’s not one person. I’ve found that it is not even related to title or if they’re an executive or not. Some of the people who have really helped me the most don’t even work in my industry, but they can relate.

“They can also help you see things from a different perspective where you remove yourself out of it to see the bigger picture,” she adds, as an epiphany of her own came when she was asked to participate in the Management Leadership Training for Tomorrow program. The nonprofit aims to “build diverse leaders and equitable workspaces” by empowering individuals from underrepresented communities of

Chantel Terrell VP of Global Sourcing & Production Savage X Fenty

Jaclyn Guidi

color to discover their potential and build a strong network.

“I had the opportunity to share experiences with senior managers from a wide range of companies. Discussing personal and professional challenges with other people of color helped me work through the hints of imposter syndrome that flare up from time to time,” Terrell says.

But one topic stood out to her: reflective leadership.

“The session exposed how I show up as a listener, which was also pivotal in my development as a leader. Listening with the intent to problem-solve does not foster development for my team members. Reflective listening is the key to fostering trust, healthy debate, and empowerment,” says Terrell, who now applies this tactic to everything from stakeholder communication to imagining long-term strategies on a grand scale.

Armed with knowledge and expertise garnered from so many defining experiences has inspired Terrell to give back to other people on the path she once walked. The VP is an active contributor to the Women of Color Retail Group, which she joined in 2020 to connect with other women of color—especially those also working in sourcing and manufacturing.

“It is a great forum to share ideas, discuss industry trends, network, and hear from other women of color in the industry,” Terrell enthuses.

She admits that before joining the team at Savage X, finding a brand that truly championed diversity was a challenge. “ Women in leadership have been rare for me in some stages of my career. Although some industries are considered maledominated, it doesn’t mean you can’t find your place and thrive,” Terrell shares.

The culture at the company recognizes that this applies to its employees, too. “In my personal life, I like to express myself through the way I dress or the way I style my hair, and to just know that I’ll be accepted in any room I enter,” Terrell says, which has undoubtedly contributed to her confidence of being the right person for her role.

These encouraging experiences shouldn’t be rare. Terrell remains a steady source of support for other women in the field, newcomers in particular, who may share some of that imposter syndrome she’s worked to banish before. “I am always open to share my perspective and journey in hopes that anything I learned along the way could empower or help others be confident to know that they, too, can achieve.”

“DISCUSSING PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGES WITH OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR HELPED ME WORK THROUGH THE HINTS OF IMPOSTER SYNDROME THAT FLARE UP FROM TIME TO TIME.”

Susan Bridges Gilder puts people at the heart of Beiersdorf’s human resources initiatives

By Natalie Kochanov

KNOW YOUR VALUES

ALMOST TWO DECADES INTO HER CAREER IN HUMAN RESOURCES, SUSAN BRIDGES GILDER REACHED A TURNING POINT. “I took a step back and started considering what type of HR role I wanted and what type of organization would be the best culture fit for me,” she says.

Bridges Gilder found what she was looking for in Beiersdorf, a global skincare company with values mirroring her own. Today, as the company’s director of HR operations and people experience (leading five team members), Bridges Gilder keeps those values front and center in her efforts to support a national and international workforce. Whether she is spearheading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or determining the future

Susan Bridges Gilder Director of HR Operations & People Experience Beiersdorf

of work in a post-COVID world, she makes sure to prioritize Beiersdorf employees and to remain a transparent and empathetic company leader.

Bridges Gilder first came to the field of HR by chance, after the designated HR person at one of her early employers left the company. “I began tackling some HR-type administration and benefits projects,” she explains. “That made me realize that this was a career to explore.”

After obtaining a master’s degree in HR and organizational development from Manhattanville College, Bridges Gilder augmented her expertise through a series of HR progressive roles spanning industries from law and international insurance brokerage to fiber optics. However, that

“culture fit” was missing—until she connected with Beiersdorf in 2011.

Right away, the fact that the company’s core values permeated all of its operations resonated with her. “Beiersdorf’s purpose is Care Beyond Skin. It’s about bringing meaning and comfort to people who use our skincare,” she elaborates. “To wake up to that mission every day is really powerful.”

Although she initially focused solely on recruiting, compliance, and employee engagement, Bridges Gilder was soon an HR business partner for Beiersdorf affiliates not only within the United States but also in Canada. She learned to navigate the Canadian cultural and legal landscape, just as she had learned to navigate the immigration process to run the company’s immigration program.

“It’s the ultimate test,” she says of the program. “You’re onboarding someone into a new country and a new culture as well as into your affiliate.”

Since becoming a director in 2017, Bridges Gilder has seen Beiersdorf through the acquisition of sunscreen brand Coppertone in 2019, the restructuring of the HR function into an operations-based

model the same year, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She helped launch the company on its DEI journey in 2020 as well. “To be a truly great organization and to represent our consumers, we want our workforce to look like those consumers,” she says.

To kick off her three-year DEI strategy, Bridges Gilder and her VP of HR and mentor Louisa Stead cofounded a designated, cross-functional council—on which Bridges Gilder serves—to set specific goals for Beiersdorf as a company. In addition to broadening the recruiting pool to reach a higher number of qualified diverse candidates, the council draws attention to the company’s seven employee resource groups and commemorates significant diverse holidays and other occasions throughout the year.

As a leader on the council and within the company at large, Bridges Gilder practices transparent communication and self-awareness. “It helps me as a leader if I think about how other people want to be treated,” she notes.

Her leadership convictions have only strengthened since she became a mother

“TO BE A TRULY GREAT ORGANIZATION AND TO REPRESENT OUR CONSUMERS, WE WANT OUR WORKFORCE TO LOOK LIKE THOSE CONSUMERS.”

to four stepchildren through her 2015 marriage. “Motherhood has been a gamechanger for me in terms of being a good listener and having empathy,” she says. “Every employee has different needs, just like every child has different needs.”

Meeting employees’ needs was more challenging than ever in 2020. As Beiersdorf’s point person for COVID, Bridges Gilder had to quickly develop a perspective on everything from mental well-being during remote work to safety protocols for office reopening.

“It was huge, learning how to create something from nothing,” she admits. “But throughout this experiment of working remotely, we remained productive and kept people engaged.”

Bridges Gilder plans to apply lessons from COVID to continue driving employee engagement moving forward. She is currently facilitating the design of a new collaboration-centric company headquarters, which she hopes will become a “destination” workspace for Beiersdorf employees. In the meantime, she will be paying close attention to the results of upcoming engagement surveys,

including one about the company’s ongoing DEI efforts.

Furthermore, Bridges Gilder will continue to enhance the employee experience surrounding onboarding, employee-manager relationships, career development, and more. “Moving into this new work world has escalated the need for everyone to know what our business ambitions are and to focus on getting there together,” she says.

As employees unite to achieve Beiersdorf’s goals, Bridges Gilder will be right by their sides. And, as always, she will be living her values through her work.

“Those values are in everything that I do,” she confirms. “In that sense, my purpose at the company doesn’t feel like a job. It feels more like a calling.”

ALMOST TWO DECADES INTO HER CAREER IN HUMAN RESOURCES, SUSAN BRIDGES GILDER REACHED A TURNING POINT. “I TOOK A STEP BACK AND STARTED CONSIDERING WHAT TYPE OF HR ROLE I WANTED AND WHAT TYPE OF ORGANIZATION WOULD BE THE BEST CULTURE FIT FOR ME,” SHE SAYS.

USI’s employee benefits practice includes hundreds of consultants and technical experts nationwide to help employers take control of their healthcare costs and positively impact company financials. Leveraging USI’s proprietary ONE Advantage process, employers gain exceptional insights into the issues affecting their plans—enhancing benefits, improving employee health, and containing costs.

“MOVING INTO THIS NEW WORK WORLD HAS ESCALATED THE NEED FOR EVERYONE TO KNOW WHAT OUR BUSINESS AMBITIONS ARE AND TO FOCUS ON GETTING THERE TOGETHER.”

For decades, our local teams have provided the employee benefits and risk management solutions that companies count on to protect their businesses and employees. We’d like to do the same for you.

to partner with Beiersdorf Inc

Towanna

Tindall

spearheaded the COVID-19 response for Trulite Glass & Aluminum Solutions, quickly developing solutions to an unprecedented challenge

By Frederick Jerant

INTO THE BREACH

Towanna Tindall VP and CHRO Trulite Glass & Aluminum Solutions

TOWANNA TINDALL, CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER AT TRULITE GLASS & ALUMINUM SOLUTIONS, THRIVES WHEN SHE’S PUSHED OUT OF HER COMFORT ZONE. Fortunately for her employer, that proved especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After earning a degree in English from the University of South Carolina, Tindall landed a job in HR supporting staffing initiatives for Tupperware Manufacturing. “That experience solidified that HR was where I really wanted to be,” says Tindall, who went on to earn her master’s degree in HR at USC’s Darla Moore School of Business.

An internship at General Motors led to a full-time HR generalist role in GM’s Small Car Group. “GM’s HR leadership was incredibly focused on the deliberate development of its next generation of HR leaders, so I was fortunate to have very broad, diverse, and challenging HR assignments,” she explains.

Her first opportunity was being a production supervisor at one of GM’s largest facilities. She began to understand the importance of labor relations as a competitive advantage, and the relationships she built made her a better labor relations representative. “I had a different sense of urgency in resolving issues, more empathy for what it took for our supervisors to get things done, and a solid grasp of the production floor that allowed me to be knowledgeable in dispute resolution,” she notes.

While at GM, she also spent three years working in Italy as regional HR manager first with the company’s joint venture with Fiat (Fiat-GM Powertrain) and then with the start-up operation of GM Powertrain Europe. “I didn’t know anyone there, and I didn’t speak the language,” she says. “But

I was so excited to take a leap of faith. The world seems so much smaller to me now after that experience.”

Tindall moved to Boeing in 2012 as HR director for business development, and six years later, she joined Trulite as its CHRO. Moving from a $58 billion aerospace company to a multimillion dollar architectural and structural metals manufacturer “was like stepping off a cruise ship onto a speedboat,” she says with a laugh.

“Trulite is much leaner with far less resources than Boeing, but less layers enables us to move very fast,” she explains. “We can try out a new idea, fail safe, and then quickly use the lessons learned to pivot to an alternative if needed.”

In a business that moves as fast as this industry, Tindall highly values collaboration, decisiveness, and diversity of thought. She creates an environment that offers a safe space for feedback, debate, and ideation. “At the end of the day, as the CHRO, I have to make the decision, but I want to be sure everyone on my team feels seen, heard, and valued,” she notes.

During her tenure at Trulite, Tindall has transitioned her team members into strategic HR business partners. “Towanna has taken HR at Trulite to a whole new

level,” notes Porter Wright’s Jim Curphey, outside legal counsel to Trulite. “She is smart, creative, and always wellprepared to tackle any problem. Her leadership clearly extends beyond HR; she is a force and a key to so much that happens at the company.”

The HR department is still evolving, but Tindall is proud of the progress. “I am very fortunate to have amazing business partners in the CEO and CFO,” Tindall says. “We have a close working relationship and discuss all facets of the business. I see myself as a business partner first.”

But nothing in her experience fully prepared Tindall for the COVID-19 pandemic. “This was outside my comfort zone,” she says. “The one thing HR leaders across the world had in common was that none of us had led through a global pandemic during our careers.”

Tindall canvassed her personal network for ideas, thoughts, and suggestions. Then she distilled best practices, figured out what she could accomplish at Trulite, and with the help of her team, developed a playbook for the company-wide response. “The leadership team was proactive and highly engaged in preparing and when we had our first case in March 2020, we were

“AT THE END OF THE DAY, AS THE CHRO, I HAVE TO MAKE THE DECISION, BUT I WANT TO BE SURE EVERYONE ON MY TEAM FEELS SEEN, HEARD, AND VALUED.”

able to put our plan in motion right away,” she says.

An ongoing challenge is the evolution of Trulite’s response to the pandemic. “We want to continue to be as transparent as possible with our workforce to keep them informed and remain vigilant in our efforts to mitigate the spread,” Tindall says. “Our primary concern is always the safety of our employees and customers. It all begins and ends with our people.”

Other events of 2020 took an emotional toll on Trulite’s workforce. The realities of mask mandates, police shootings, political rallies, and worldwide protests seeped into the workplace. “People were really raw psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. As leaders, we could not turn away to what everyone, including myself, was feeling,” Tindall explains.

Trulite chose to face the issues head on, creating safe spaces for employees to talk

about what they were feeling and how it was impacting their mental health. Leaders were encouraged to “take the temperature” of their teams and partner with HR to facilitate those conversations.

“Having those conversations was sometimes difficult, but the risks and costs of not having them was far greater,” Tindall says.

Though Tindall didn’t have experience with pandemic responses, she leaned into her discomfort and helped Trulite through the COVID-19 pandemic. Being agile was key, and it’s an important skill for HR professionals across the globe, Tindall notes.

“You will need to evolve and change to stay ahead of the ever-transforming HR landscape to adapt that to your business,” Tindall says. “Don’t hesitate to challenge yourself with new and different opportunities. Experience and exposure are the keys to growth.”

Spinnaker is a full-service sta ng agency specializing in the construction, engineering, manufacturing, skilled trade, warehousing and o ce/clerical fields. As a service-centric sta ng and business consulting company we are a trusted partner to our candidates, clients, and employees. Spinnaker has repeatedly been selected by major corporations to enhance their recruiting processes and deliver sta ng services. Whether you are looking for temporary sta ng, direct hires, or HR solutions and consulting, we as a renowned employment agency are here to be of service to our clients.

“OUR PRIMARY CONCERN IS ALWAYS THE SAFETY OF OUR EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS. IT ALL BEGINS AND ENDS WITH OUR PEOPLE.”

With a strong HR foundation in place, Kim Lazerus supports Maverik employees through a pandemic and beyond

By Dan Caffrey

THE PEOPLE PERSPECTIVE

Kim Lazerus VP of HR Maverik Steven Vargo

carry over into more competitive wages. It’s not about going completely back to normal but thinking about what could continue to improve after such a difficult year.

This all runs in tandem with another big shift happening at Maverik: an increased focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Lazerus points out that at the stores themselves, “diversity just happens,” as each store reflects the community it serves. The company’s corporate office, however, is based in Salt Lake City, a community that, according to the 2019 census, is nearly 73 percent white. To bring greater attention to DEI, HR created an employee resource group called Limitless.

“How do we work together beyond what our limits are?” Lazerus asks. “Together, we can accomplish a whole lot more. We’re educating everyone here about how to

understand what’s similar between all of us and what’s different. We need to appreciate the differences that people have by being curious and inquisitive so that we don’t leave anybody behind.”

It’s a philosophy that ties to Lazerus’s overall outlook on HR—a “people perspective” that will guide Maverik into its next chapter as the world comes back to life.

“We’re going to continue to focus on this notion of ‘we,’” Lazerus says. “We are in this together. You may play a different role in the company than I do, but together, this is what we can accomplish.”

Impact 21 has been privileged to work alongside Kim Lazerus at Maverik for several years. Our work has been heavily rooted in improving strategy, business processes, and operational excellence that supports a culture of collaboration and inclusion. Kim excels at the highest level and always goes above and beyond.

“IT’S STILL ABOUT PEOPLE. IT’S STILL ABOUT CULTURE. IT’S ABOUT HOW WE CONTINUE TO CREATE THAT FRICTIONLESS EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, WHICH IN TURN CREATES A FRICTIONLESS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.”

Donovan Mattole focuses on Brenntag’s employees as he prepares the company for the future

By Natalie Kochanov

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT EXPERT

WHEN DONOVAN MATTOLE DROPPED OUT OF HIS MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES GRADUATE DEGREE PROGRAM IN JERUSALEM, AND RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE MID-1990S, HE DIDN’T EXPECT THE TEMPORARY BREAK WOULD BECOME PERMANENT. He accepted a management job with Borders Books & Music, and discovered a new interest outside of academia: employee engagement and training and developing leaders.

“I quickly realized that my true passion was employee engagement and development, and I wanted to make an impact beyond the walls of my store,” Mattole says. He was given the chance when Borders created HR Business Partners in 2001, and he took over their West Coast region.

In the twenty-plus years since that realization, he has translated his passion into a successful career overseeing talent, engagement, and HR at a number of global companies. Today, as vice president of HR for the Americas at chemical distributor Brenntag SE, Mattole leads major people

and culture initiatives that demonstrate his commitment to employee engagement and well-being across the entire Western Hemisphere.

After a decade with Borders, Donovan took this experience to global fitness equipment manufacturer Nautilus Inc., where his role expanded outside of the United States to Asia. Over the following fifteen years, he built up his HR expertise through a series of progressive—and increasingly global—HR positions at Nautilus Inc. and then Mars Inc.

When he came on board at Brenntag in early 2016, Mattole faced his greatest challenge yet. “Coming into the role, I had the challenging and exciting opportunity to take a fragmented and decentralized HR organization and bring it all together as a harmonious function that could deliver what the business needed,” explains Mattole, who was hired as the first head of HR for North America.

To create a unified HR strategy, Mattole implemented systems and processes to develop Brenntag’s employees and

Donovan Mattole VP of HR, Americas Brenntag SE

strengthen the company’s talent pipeline, with a focus on leadership and succession. In 2020, Mattole’s role broadened to encompass a region spanning from Alaska to Argentina. He balances a global HR perspective with regional and national considerations to curate a consistent employee experience and company culture across all geographies.

When it comes to the Brenntag employee experience, Mattole always circles back to engagement—especially when many of the company’s employees shifted to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. “During the pandemic, we made an effort to think about how we are engaging employees in a virtual and diversified manner,” he says.

Mattole will gauge the effectiveness of the resulting action plans through an August 2021 follow-up survey on which he is partnering with the organization Great Place to Work. In the meantime, he will continue to facilitate Brenntag’s latest diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

In the summer of 2020, Mattole facilitated an internal dialogue on race and related issues, and he and his team are focused on looking internally to ensure that Brenntag is truly creating a place where equity and inclusion are a consideration for all. The team has held many conversations about employee well-being, especially during this pandemic.

“Employees on average have been working more per day from home and taking less time off,” Mattole says. This might lead to higher levels of stress and burnout, and the company has been encouraging employees to take time off to recharge, despite travel restrictions.

Post-COVID, the “Brenntag Tomorrow” campaign will include a plan that will appeal to top talent who are looking for a company that is innovative and flexibility-driven, one that will resonate with the next generation of job seekers who are looking for exciting careers and development opportunities.

One such opportunity already offered at Brenntag is the Catalyst Leadership Course,

a training program designed to unlock the potential of all company leaders. It has recently been completely redesigned as a virtual training that is now reaching double the number of leaders at the same cost.

“The idea is that the true catalyst to drive our business is our people. We need our leaders to understand what it means to lead by our core values,” Mattole says. “And it has now been redesigned to touch even more employees. The majority of employee engagement comes directly from line managers, and that is why we focus so heavily on developing leaders. I have found it truly is the biggest impact on an employee’s engagement with the company.”

The same core values underlie Mattole’s personal approach to leadership. “I cement every decision in our core values,” he confirms. “It is our role as leaders in HR to truly not forget that we are advocates of both the company and our employees. The company will only truly win when we create a place where em -

ployees can unlock their careers and be truly engaged.”

Mattole understands the direct correlations between employee engagement, customer service, and business results. To keep driving all three, he aims to maintain what already makes Brenntag a great place to work—while striving to make it even better.

“We’re very people-oriented, and we have low turnover as a business,” Mattole says. “One of our main focuses is to preserve those strengths while at the same time attracting new and diverse talent.”

“IT IS OUR ROLE AS LEADERS IN HR TO TRULY NOT FORGET THAT WE ARE ADVOCATES OF BOTH THE COMPANY AND OUR EMPLOYEES.”

Susie Long on how Bridgestone Americas has prioritized DEI efforts and is creating an inclusive environment

By Keith Loria

DRIVING DEI

SUSIE LONG NEVER EXPECTED HER CAREER PATH TO LEAD HER TO HUMAN RESOURCES. “I needed to pay for college, and the easiest job for me to get was in retail,” recalls Long, who really wanted to pursue a career in the fashion industry. “I was working for the Limited Corp. when they owned Express, Structure, Victoria Secret, etc., and worked my way up in management and retail operations.”

She stayed in retail operations until her mid-thirties, and continued to grow her career, working in everything from luxury goods to the optical industry.

“It got to the point in my career where the next step would be a divisional vice president and I realized I really loved the people side of the business more than the operations,” Long says. “I was approached with an opportunity to explore this new role that was forming—and we know it today as an HR business partner.”

This hybrid role required someone with a lot of experience in operations who could also lead the talent agenda. That was with Luxottica, where Long worked

on innovative and high-impact talent management programs and processes to improve the depth and diversity of leadership talent.

“That was my first foray into HR, and I absolutely fell in love with it,” she says. “From there, I started to grow my career in HR and all the different disciplines.”

In 2014, she was offered a position at Bridgestone Americas and today serves as the company’s vice president of talent, diversity, and culture. “Bridgestone was at a pivotal point when I joined the organization and they had a history of being very insular for a very long time and had not made a practice of hiring talent from the outside,”

Courtesy of Bridgestone Americas

Long explains. “In 2014, they were about two years into professionalizing some of the functional areas.”

“I stepped into talent acquisition and was really in charge of professionalizing a lot of the processes, like internal candidate experience, internal hiring process, and our expat process. Those weren’t formalized at the time,” Long says. “From there, I was promoted into talent management and leadership development.”

She believes her operations background helped her understand the pain points of the business. “We made sure that everything we did in talent management was seen through the lens of the business and we simplified processes and practices to make them more effective. As a result of that, we were able to get greater adoption of our talent processes,” Long says.

“We’ve gone from being a more tactical HR function to more of a strategic HR function,” she adds.

Over the past three years, Long has taken over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Bridgestone, as well as teammate engagement and talent acquisition. The

DEI journey for Bridgestone started in 2016 when the business was going through a transformation, shifting from a traditional manufacturing company to a consumer goods organization.

“Our CEO at the time recognized that we did not have a lot of diversity—racial, gender, etc., and that was a catalyst for focusing on it organizationally,” Long says. “We focused primarily on female representation then, as being a tire manufacturer, it’s a pretty male-dominated industry.”

Bridgestone Americas’ current CEO, Paolo Ferrari, has a passion for DEI and values diverse experiences and perspectives. In 2020, under Ferrari’s leadership, education around DEI accelerated, and Bridgestone Americas expanded its employee resources groups for women, Latino/Hispanic teammates, Black and African-American teammates, LGBTQ teammates, veterans, and the next generation of leaders.

“Our actions supporting DEI are closely linked to our sustainability strategy and our business strategy,” Long explains. “We want to shift from being a traditional

manufacturer to a mobility solutions organization. That is going to require different expertise, different backgrounds and skill sets, as well as gender, race, ethnicity, experiences, etc.”

In 2021, the company launched a new DEI campaign, which Long is extremely excited about. It’s called Free to Be, and it touts Bridgestone as a company where everyone is free to come in and be themself, whoever that is and whatever that looks like.

“I think that really started to show our teammates that we are serious about DEI,” Long notes. “We know there’s still a lot of work to be done with DEI. We’re not saying we have arrived, but we have definitely improved our female representation and racial diversity, and we’ve started to build momentum in the LGBTQ community.”

With the pandemic beginning to lift, Long is contemplating how the company can work in a hybrid environment and create the feeling of inclusion when people are so dispersed.

“Diversity has sort of shape-shifted, and now we’re talking about diversity of work experience and work preferences,” Long says in her May 2021 interview. “We are having this cultural shift because the world has forced us to think about how to manage virtually and become effective leaders and help your team be productive in this new normal. It’s diversity in a different way and inclusion in a different way, but still very relevant in the environment we are trying to create.”

As companies are working to integrate DEI into the organizational culture, Career Thrivers partners with inclusive leaders to prioritize three DEI critical success factors: dedication, education, and infrastructure. Our focus on inclusive leadership for equity is helping organizations cultivate a culture where everyone can thrive! Learn more at careerthrivers.com.

Culture Shift Team applauds Bridgestone Americas’ leadership commitment to advance equity and inclusion. We proudly serve as the diversity, equity, and inclusion training partner to BSA. CST provides dynamic education sessions to visionary organizations via live webinar and e-learning to build managers’ confidence and competence to lead inclusively.

SETTING SAIL FOR SUCCESS

By Maggie Lynch

standing travel restrictions, the impact of vaccinations, and assessing the need of

stresses that the highest responsibility and top priorities of the company are always

UNLOCKING POTENTIAL

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world’s leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highestvalue opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises.

For more information, please visit bcg.com.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world’s leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises.

As the global market leader in retail at sea, Starboard Cruise Services takes pride in curating vacation retail experiences with the best cruise line partners in the world. Congratulations, Renata Ribeiro, for leading a remarkable career with vision, passion and resilience. We are honored to work with you and Carnival Corporation.

Bringing 140 Years of Duty Free to the Americas

Heinemann Americas brings five generations of success in the travel retail market to the largest cruise lines in the world. Discover what we have to offer at heinemann-americas.com.

GLOBAL LEADERS IN CRUISE RETAIL

We are proud to partner with Carnival Cruise Line to deliver the best retail experiences and curated offerings at sea.

We salute Renata Ribeiro, Senior Vice President, Office of the COO, for Carnival Corporation, for her passion, dedication and leadership.

Heinemann Americas, Inc.

Drive Your Organization and Career Forward

Twice

Fit for the Job

At Gympass, Nikki Salenetri leans into her passion for health and wellness to help employees lead a healthy lifestyle

By KEITH LORIA

Gympass

As a six-time Ironman finisher, and a twelve-time marathoner who has competed at the Half Ironman World Championships, Nikki Salenetri is no stranger to the fitness world.

“I’m really passionate about health, fitness, and wellness, and I’ve been an athlete my entire life,” Salenetri shares. She’s channeled that passion to build a successful human resources career in the health and fitness industry, where she leads Gympass as its vice president of HR.

For grad school, Salenetri studied industrial organizational psychology at NYU, and

Nikki Salenetri VP of HR Gympass

that led her to enter the HR field. But she didn’t take the path that most did, choosing to go in-house rather than consult at change management organizations. While at NYU, she worked at Retensa, and when the company was looking to sell business to Dow Jones, Salenetri used the connection to land a position as an HR coordinator for the larger company.

After three years, she entered the fitness world when Equinox reached out to her on LinkedIn. The company was looking for someone who was aligned with what they were doing and an HR manager who cared about wellness.

Her next role combined her love for the fitness industry with her experience from the publishing industry when she joined Rodale, which publishes such magazines as Women’s Health and Runners World . When they were purchased by Hearst, she felt it was time for a new opportunity.

“I wanted to try my best to stay in the fitness and wellness space, and I was lucky to find an opportunity at Gympass,” says Salenetri, whose initial position was head of human resources. “When I joined, we were working in a super different way than we are now. It was very siloed, and I was essentially the first HR hire in the US,” she explains.

That allowed her the ability to build her own team as well as the processes and practices of the entire HR department.

“Over time, as our company has evolved, I have focused on creating more scalable processes and things that we can implement globally,” she says. “We’ve shifted from doing everything for our regions to having more specialized teams within HR and supporting the business more from a functional standpoint. At this point, I am a global business partner for a few different functions that we have at theorganization and oversee HR systems and operations globally as well.”

“We want to be sure we practice what we preach and that our employees really feel that they could live a healthy lifestyle.”

NIKKI SALENETRI

Courtesy of Gympass

One of her first initiatives was establishing a program that allows for twelve weeks of fully paid parental leave. She helped implement an employee engagement software tool that provides critical data to help the HR team understand what programs to create to be impactful.

Another of the big initiatives that Salenetri led was the implementation of a global WorkDay in January 2020, which combined three different HRIS systems from different regions into one global system, and that process aligned with bringing the benefits and payroll in-house.

“It was an aggressive goal and timeline, and it was a real challenge to create a system that worked for different regions because different countries have different compliance concerns and different ways of doing things,” she recalls. “It was eye-opening for me, and it’s shifted how I approach any project I work on at Gympass now, making sure I understand from my global counterparts what they’re experiencing in their regions to make sure what we’re putting in place from an HR standpoint works for everyone.”

When COVID-19 hit, it was something of a big challenge, and it threw some things at her she wasn’t prepared for.

“In HR, no matter how long you do it, I feel there’s always something that comes up that you’ve never dealt with before, and though I didn’t think a pandemic would be

one of those, here we are,” she says, laughing. “It really challenged us in a lot of ways to figure out how to transition to a remote workforce and support our employees and managers with those changes.”

Being a health and wellness company, it was also critical that the HR team made sure employees focused on their health— especially their mental health—during this time and had the resources available to them that they needed to take care of themselves.

“They looked to HR to make sure our employees felt like they were taken care of and felt like they were safe,” Salenetri notes. “We put a lot of emphasis on supporting our managers and making sure people were staying engaged and productive. We provided a lot of resources to them to help and held global town halls once a week to encourage more communication.”

She also arranged social opportunities like no-shower happy hours, starting with a workout at 1:00 p.m. on Fridays and allowing workers to take off the rest of the day; introduced an app called Donut that randomly put people together to do a coffee meet-up; and utilized Gympass product offerings to support employees from a health and wellness standpoint.

“We want to be sure we practice what we preach and that our employees really feel that they could live a healthy lifestyle,” Salenetri shares.

“[COVID-19] really challenged us in a lot of ways to figure out how to transition to a remote workforce and support our employees.”

NIKKI SALENETRI

The Workplace of the Future

Mira Wolff seeks creative ways to strengthen employee connectivity and culture during the pandemic through her dual role as CHRO and general counsel

By LUCY CAVANAGH

“I have an interesting background because for the majority of my career, I have straddled both human resources and the legal department,” says Mira Wolff, general counsel and chief human resources officer at California-based Venbrook Group. “It’s a unique blend, but I really am passionate in both areas.”

Wolff had also been involved in theater in her earlier years, which gives her an unexpected edge when it comes to the internal communication and training that falls under her purview. “I do a lot of presentations and webinars to employees, particularly on the HR side,” Wolff says. “So even though I don’t perform any more, when we do company-wide meetings, or I have the opportunity to do training or presentations, I enjoy being the orchestrator

Mira Wolff CHRO and General Counsel Venbrook Group

and choreographing the event. It gives me a chance to use my creative side.”

Wolff graduated from Southwestern Law School in 1992 with a focus in employment law. Her first in-house experience was at a mortgage company called Encore Credit before the mortgage crash in 2007. From there she worked at various e-commerce and tech companies including Newegg.com, Everbridge Inc., and Equator, covering both human resources and legal bases every step of the way.

Wolff had her first experience in the insurance industry with Confie Seguros before moving on to Venbrook in 2016, where she has been ever since. Both Confie Seguros and Venbrook grow on an acquisition model, which helped her become used to the logistics of integration of acquired entities.

“My background has helped me to support numerous acquisitions and integrate those entities into Venbrook,” Wolff explains. “That includes welcoming the new employees, getting them onto our platforms, and extending our employee engagement initiatives and culture to all of those entities as they become members of the family.”

Like so many other companies across the country, Venbrook has responded to the unprecedented changes caused by the pandemic. The majority of the employees worked from home in 2020 and 2021, and with the added challenge of being located all over the United States, Wolff has

Courtesy of Venbrook Group

sought out creative ways to keep them all engaged and make them feel involved in the company’s culture.

“Not being able to get together in our offices really changed things,” Wolff elaborates. “Most of our employees were sitting in their houses, including most of our leaders. In a lot of ways, it was a great equalizer, but it was also a challenge to find new ways to keep people feeling involved with Venbrook culture.”

Right from the start of the pandemic, Wolff and her HR team drafted a series of initiatives that would help ease the transition to working from home for the Venbrook workforce. Staying active was a major priority—they implemented events like the “Seventh Inning Stretch,” which consisted of scheduled time for company-wide yoga sessions twice a week.

The company also partnered with Cigna Health Corporation to test a new fitness and wellness app that tapped into employee competitiveness and incentivized them to stay healthy while team building.

“We put teams together across the country for eight weeks during the Venbrook Fitness Challenge. Employees were able to track walking, running, yoga, weightlifting, biking, swimming, hiking, and other sports activities while competing against each other,” Wolff explains. “They were able to see how they were doing as a team and individually compared to the rest of the company. Employees were talking to each

other who never would have met otherwise while we were all stuck at home.”

Despite the success that Wolff has had in keeping up the company morale and helping the workforce through this new way of work, she adamantly believes in the importance of an in-person work dynamic at least part of the time.

As more and more companies decide to never go back to the office, Wolff worries that that decision could give the younger generation the short end of the stick.

“Many of us who are further along in our careers are knowledgeable enough to handle working from home, but the younger generations will end up losing out on the experiences that we’ve all had, which got us here,” Wolff says. “Many young professionals across the country were in their first year of work this past year, and they started their jobs working in their parents’ living room rather than an office.”

Wolff predicts that as the world emerges from the pandemic, many companies will be able to embrace the lessons learned and pursue a new type of work environment that features the best of both worlds.

“We’ll definitely need a hybrid model. Without any time in the office, we may lose connectivity,” Wolff explains. “The younger generation needs a chance to meet their mentors, and they will have a better opportunity for this to happen if we eventually go back into the office for at least part of the time.”

“In a lot of ways, [working remote] was a great equalizer, but it was also a challenge to find new ways to keep people feeling involved with Venbrook culture.”

MIRA WOLFF

Growth in Change

Ginger King’s passion for authentic leadership was planted long before her career in human resources began

By WILL GRANT

There are those who eventually find their way to human resources, and then there is the story of a young Ginger King. King’s father, a manufacturing plant manager, would occasionally bring his young daughter to work. While waiting for her father to finish his workday, King read through résumés of potential applicants and stacked them for her father in order of who she thought would make the best hire. Little did King know, her passion for identifying strong talent was here to stay.

While she wouldn’t embrace the traditional HR path until college, King has been building out expertise in privately held businesses her entire life: from her mom’s business, which was run from the family home, to her current employer, Kohler Company, where she is the vice president

Ginger King VP of HR for Kitchen & Bath Group Kohler Company

of human resources for the Kitchen and Bath Group.

Throughout her career, King has believed in taking chances and championing change for the better. This belief would take her many places, including two separate stints at Kohler. After twelve years at Kohler, King accepted a position outside of the company leading a human resources function at a mid-sized manufacturing company. As she transitioned, the words of her leader at the time—“I’m just telling myself that we’re outsourcing your next development opportunity”—stayed with King.

For the next three years, King would transform a HR function into a trusted business partner, from helping align the

employee experience to the core values to ensuring all processes and programs were tailored to the organization’s people and culture vision.

King was eventually asked to take on a general management role within the same company, broadening her leadership skills and experience. But not too long after that, “Kohler Company started calling again,” King says, laughing.

Since 2019, King has been promoted twice at Kohler Company. In her first two years back, King was able to help enable a continued cultural transformation by partnering with leaders across the company.

Kohler was also prepping a global operating model reset, which King helped to lead

by redesigning the organization. This effort inadvertently coincided with the pandemic shutdown of 2020.

“It’s a testament to a business like Kohler that has come so far but is dedicated to taking time to rethink how we want to structure our business to accelerate growth into the future,” King says. “We are a brand that’s known for being on the leading edge of product innovation, so how do we stay true to that in all areas of the business?”

Part of that new approach involves creating a culture that empowers people to thrive in a more agile and efficient way. “We want to align work and decisions closest to the customer and ensure that we’re utilizing technology to its fullest,” the VP explains.

“We’re looking at everything from how we work to how we develop the skills and capabilities necessary to continue to delight our customers.”

During this transformation period, King says she’s been impressed by just how blank the drawing board was allowed to be when strategizing the future organizational design.

And throughout all of this innovation and evolution, King has found her own skill set consistently growing. The VP is a pragmatic yet optimistic leader who has mastered the art of communicating with leaders and employees.

“One of the things that you find in privately owned businesses is that many times, individuals will just try and tell [the business] what they want to hear,” King

explains. “It’s incredibly important to be clear with them about the reality of what’s going on and remind them of their influence in those environments.”

From reviewing résumés at her dad’s desk to championing a transformative culture, King’s approach to her role makes her a trusted partner for honesty, transparency, and authentic leadership.

Congratulations

to Ginger King and Kohler Company for this recognition. Ginger exemplifies how HR helps to build and support culture in a family corporation—where culture is the heartbeat. Stranberg Resource Group serves family businesses through comprehensive executive search, succession planning, and facilitation services. Check us out at stranberg.com.

“It’s a testament to a business like Kohler that has come so far but is dedicated to taking time to rethink how we want to structure our business to accelerate growth into the future.”

GINGER KING

Egon Zehnder

congratulates

Ginger King for her leadership at Kohler.

Every business question requires a human answer.

A People-First Leader

CIO Kevin Apperson creates a space at Maxim Healthcare Group for his IT team members to work together and grow as leaders

By KEITH LORIA

Kevin Apperson is a peoplefirst leader. “You need process, you need strategy, you need technical acumen, but I always start with understanding goals and objectives,” says the chief information officer at Maxim Healthcare Group. “I spend a lot of time listening so I can easily break down problems into easily digestible components for team members.”

Because technology is constantly changing and challenging to keep up with, Apperson knows it takes people working together, who believe in each other as a team, to actually deliver.

“My job is to lead and create the space for [my team members] to work together to solve problems, to remove obstacles and help them grow,” he explains. “There’s a lot of teaching in my role.”

After earning a degree in electrical engineering, Apperson spent the early part of his career designing circuits and systems for RCA and working on microcomputers in the 1980s. Because he also had a programming

background, he was enlisted to write software and code, eventually transitioning to a role as a full-time software engineer.

After leaving RCA, he did a five-year stint at Martin Marietta Aero & Naval Systems writing software for defense systems, followed by nearly six years at UPS, where he started managing people in its Geographic Information Systems technology group.

“That’s when I moved into a full-time management role in IT,” Apperson explains.

He was then offered the chance to become applications manager at Aerotek (the original name of the Allegis Group). Aerotek was a fast-growing company in the technical staffing market, and in five years, he was promoted from manager to director and eventually to chief information officer.

After spending seventeen years with the company—ten as CIO—Apperson took a job as CIO at Maxim Healthcare Group, a medical staffing company headquartered in Columbia, Maryland. So far, he’s enjoyed his role for nine years.

“As CIO, I’ve done just about every possible project you can think of in delivering IT

Kevin Apperson CIO Maxim Healthcare Group

DIGITAL WORKPLACE REDEFINED

Work securely from anywhere, anytime TEKsystems positioned in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Workplace Services, North America for third consecutive year.

Proud to be Maxim Healthcare’s preferred partner for Digital Workplace Services.

services for a company, and it’s been quite an experience,” Apperson says.

Over the years, he’s learned that technology can’t build itself and needs to be built by human beings. So, Apperson has a specific set of requirements in mind when looking for people to join his team.

“You need people with the ability to think through and solve problems, design solutions, build them out, and test them in the real world,” he explains. “And as you deliver the solution, you have to interface with customers—or in this company, employees, patients, and caregivers, who are not technical experts. So how you deliver that software is really based upon how well you understand the user and what their needs are.”

That’s a big focus of Apperson’s role: making sure that his internal team understands the relevant tools, processes, and technologies; that the team is trained and motivated; and that the right culture is in place to build exceptional solutions.

“To me, that’s the heart of it,” he says. “If you have good people who are motivated, they can build exceptional solutions to solve almost any kind of problem you can think of.”

Apperson sees all the complexities of normal software delivery and solutions in healthcare, but he also has an additional level of responsibility to ensure everything is compliant, secure, and meets the needs of all patients and caregivers.

“Healthcare IT requires a lot more human interaction than in other systems,” he shares. “We’ve built services here that are mobile, used by caregivers to collect information at the bedside of a patient. We’ve built applications that collect medical data. We’ve had to create virtual networks and make sure that applications were robust so

that when something failed, it didn’t break the entire application.”

One place Apperson’s engineering background helps is when it comes to complex problems. He can be very systemic and works through processes to solve them.

“I’m willing to have the tough conversations with people; we’ve had some great times and we’ve had some tough times,” he shares. “Just being honest with team members, the company, and our business partners is the best way to get any problem solved.”

A big initiative for the department is working in DevOps, a methodology around delivering higher-quality products and services faster by integrating teams on both the back end and front end of application delivery services.

“We have another concept we call ‘shift left,’ where we include all teams up front in the imagining and delivery of an IT service so they can weigh in and give their feedback,” he explains. “It’s more of an agile approach that adds faster speed to market and increases the quality of the product or service.”

Both of these initiatives build confidence in the team and help them grow, and Apperson appreciates that the IT department is building leaders.

“I know someday I am going to leave, and when I do, I’m going to leave behind a really confident, smart group of people,” he says. “That’s what gets me excited every day.”

Congratulations, Kevin Apperson and Maxim Healthcare, for your commitment to delivering exceptional customer service and compassionate patient care. TEKsystems Global Services, a full-stack technology services provider, is proud to be your preferred partner for Digital Workplace Services.

Service at the Core

“Human resources was not something I really thought I would end up doing with my life, but once I was in it, I fell in love. I’ve never strayed,” says Amy Anderson, vice president of human resources at Volkert Inc. “It was the service side of it that attracted me. I realized early on as a new hire in an organization how tough it can be to acclimate to a new place.

By LUCY CAVANAGH

“You have so much information thrown at you at one time based on your position, your department, and the company,” she adds. “It can be overwhelming. Employees need support in order to be

At employee-owned Volkert, Amy Anderson and her team expand learning and development opportunities to help employees grow

successful in their jobs and in their career with the organization.”

Anderson brings this passion for growth and development to Volkert, a nationally recognized infrastructure engineering firm. She and her human resources team are implementing and expanding resources for the company’s workforce.

She began her twenty-year-plus career in the healthcare industry at Providence Hospital in Mobile, Alabama. She initially worked part-time as a file clerk, but when an opportunity to transfer to executive assistant to the senior vice president of HR arose, she jumped on it. She had been a business management major at Spring Hill College, but she immediately identified HR as her strong suit. From executive assistant, she worked her way up the ranks to a recruiter role and then manager of compensation and benefits.

After leaving Providence, Anderson stuck with healthcare for many years, working in a director role at companies such as TeamHealth Anesthesia Management Services, and then as VP of HR at EnduraCare AcuteCare and Brighton Rehabilitation. After Brighton Rehabilitation was sold, she went on to gain experience in the construction industry and expand her network in the engineering field—which led her to Volkert.

The timing to join Volkert was ideal for Anderson. The previous parent company to

Brighton Rehabilitation had been trying to pull their employees to their headquarters in Salt Lake City, but she was reluctant to uproot her family. In addition to being a local company, Volkert attracted Anderson in numerous ways.

“Volkert has a very strong reputation in the engineering and construction industry,” Anderson says. “The company has been in business since 1925, so that is an attraction to someone who’s looking for somewhere to grow, stay, and retire.”

On top of that, Volkert is a 100 percent employee-owned company that offers countless benefits for the people who work there. Beyond the traditional 401(k), Volkert employees are part of an employee stock

ownership plan (ESOP), which in many ways functions as a second retirement plan.

“It creates buy-in with your employees like nothing else,” Anderson explains. “They know that everything they do works toward the common goal of Volkert’s success and that the more profit Volkert makes, the more the employees earn in their ESOP. It also creates a sense of financial security and well-being for the employees’ futures.”

Anderson joined Volkert as the benefits and compensation manager but soon thereafter, she succeeded her boss as vice president of human resources. That promotion meant taking over a major learning and organization development (L&OD) initiative that would

Amy Anderson VP of HR Volkert Inc.

Amy Busbee

We Care About What You Care About.

When you take good care of something you love, with time, it can become treasure. Same for your business. It’s why more businesses partner with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama for their health coverage. Employees prefer Blue Cross because Blue Cross takes care of them.

overhaul many of the company’s HR training efforts.

“We were behind the eight ball with things like our mentor program and our annual compliance training,” Anderson says. “Before, we had a piecemeal approach to professional development. Each region did things differently with little support from HR just because we had not developed that area.”

Prior to Anderson’s promotion, an L&OD specialist was hired to help them tackle the initiative. After a few months of the new team member adjusting to Volkert’s culture and dynamic management structure, they hired an L&OD manager to lead the team. The team was tasked with researching, selecting, and implementing a system for managing employee development.

“With the new L&OD team in place, we quickly established an electronic learning management system to house all of our training and professional development courses,” Anderson says. “It really allows us to have targeted learning opportunities for

our employees. We rolled out the new system in March [2021].”

In such a highly technical field, like engineering, a system like this one ensures that employees stay up-to-date with their certifications and professional licenses as well as other training opportunities. This has streamlined their efforts enormously—the system is able to track who has completed their courses and will send reminders to those who haven’t.

“It has definitely made a big impact on our company and our employees already,” Anderson says. “I think they appreciate having something like this at their fingertips. Employees can go in and search for a specific class from the myriad of courses at their disposal.”

Anderson and her team plan to continue expanding the initiative as well, hoping to include leadership training courses, career pathing, and succession planning in addition to the technical courses. They see the positive feedback from their employees and know that they are headed in the right direction.

“You have so much information thrown at you at one time . . . It can be overwhelming. Employees need support in order to be successful in their jobs and in their career with the organization.”

AMY ANDERSON

Expanding Worldviews

Sheila Ewing shares how Magic Johnson Enterprises has enriched her life and the lives of others through travel and community investment

By DAN CAFFREY

Earvin “Magic” Johnson has always known how to pivot. In addition to being recognized as the best NBA point guard of all time, he’s been a professional coach and president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Since retiring from the sport, he’s ascended in the boardroom as chairman and CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises (MJE), his namesake investment company that catalyzes economic growth and empowerment in underserved and multicultural communities.

With Johnson at the helm, MJE has opened everything from movie theaters to restaurants and electronics stores—the goal being to increase the quality of life in the surrounding areas of these businesses. In 1998, Johnson even teamed up with Starbucks, becoming the only franchisee in the

coffee giant’s history as he acquired and eventually sold 125 stores.

So when the COVID-19 epidemic turned the world upside down in March 2020, Johnson and his colleagues were ready. Just ask Vice President of Finance and Operations Sheila Ewing.

“Every year, we have a corporate retreat, and one of the things Mr. Johnson always says—even in nonpandemic times—is that we need to adapt and adjust,” Ewing says. “So that’s what we did. There was of course some initial shock at what the world was going through. But we quickly moved on, as that kind of adaptable mindset had already been incorporated into our thinking for

years. What’s that saying? ‘If you want God to tell you a joke, make plans.’”

Ewing first came to MJE nearly twenty years ago, shortly after the first phase of the Starbucks deal. “We were still establishing ourselves as a brand in the community,” she says. “Our mantra is ‘We are the communities we serve.’ Now, we’re more of an established brand.”

Since then, her duties have expanded to overseeing the financial logistics of ten different entities within MJE. She describes her job as being similar to a controller— planning and managing budgets, payroll, and transactions with business partners. She previously oversaw the day-to-day

Sheila Ewing

VP of Finance & Operations

Magic Johnson Enterprises

finances of her boss’ nonprofit organization, the Magic Johnson Foundation, which officially dissolved in February 2020 after thirty years. She also functions as the liaison between human resources and the rest of MJE. The job is operational as much as it is financial.

But when asked what her proudest moment or project is at MJE, she names something that’s decidedly more personal than a budget or a business deal.

“We did a whole remodel of the office,” Ewing says. “So I created this timeline—a history wall, if you will—of Magic Johnson’s life. It shows him as a baby, then follows him through high school to college at Michigan State to his time with the Lakers and all his business ventures. It was really fulfilling, putting a life together like that and seeing how many different people he’s positively impacted.”

Among those people are Ewing and the rest of MJE’s employees. She goes on to describe Johnson’s acts of generosity toward his team, including taking them all on several trips to other countries, including a

European sojourn for the sixtieth birthdays of Johnson and his wife Cookie.

“For me, travel is a great equalizer,” Ewing says. “It just opens and brightens your eyes. It helps you realize that as much as people are different, they are also alike. I come from a small town in Alabama, and when I started coming to Los Angeles, I realized that travel just gives you more empathy and understanding.”

Hailing from Lansing, Michigan, before finding success as an NBA legend, Johnson has a similar perspective. He wants everyone at MJE to expand their worldviews beyond the place where they grew up, just like he got to do at a young age. “You’re bigger than your immediate surroundings,” Ewing says.

Of course, MJE had to put travel on hold for a good portion of 2020 and 2021. Trips were canceled, corporate retreats took place online, and Magic Johnson transferred his renowned motivational speeches—usually delivered to a packed stadium or conference room—to Zoom. But now, after a hard-fought year, operations are gradually returning

“For me, travel is a great equalizer. It just opens and brightens your eyes. It helps you realize that as much as people are different, they are also alike.”

SHEILA EWING

THANKS FOR ALL THAT YOU DO.

to some semblance of normalcy. At the time of writing in June 2021, Johnson had resumed his in-person speaking engagements, having just taken the stage with fellow NBA Champion and Hall of Fame inductee Isiah Thomas at a rally for United Wholesale Mortgage.

As for Ewing, she’s stayed busy with a variety of projects, including helping Johnson’s daughter Elisa launch her own line of luxury (yet still affordable) eyewear in May 2021.

“We’re always busy,” Ewing says. “But now we’re back to a different kind of busy.”

“You’re bigger than your immediate surroundings.”

SHEILA EWING

Making the Grade

By DONALD LIEBENSON

The year 2021 marks Amherst College’s bicentennial, and the spirit is strong in Ralph Johnson, director of shared services and procurement. He has been with the Massachusetts college for almost four years, and in that time, he has been an integral process transformation agent.

“I initially had the opportunity to come to the college as its inaugural procurement officer and enhance the procurement program,” Johnson explains. “Being able to come in with my expertise and start that off was an opportunity I couldn’t resist.” This opportunity then led to also being the leader of shared services, which encompasses payroll, accounts payable, shared HR services, and HR information systems.

In the capacity of the college’s procurement officer, Johnson forges vendor relationships and makes sure he gets the

The son of two schoolteachers, Ralph Johnson has developed a cutting-edge procurement program founded on his belief in people development, partner relationships, and process improvement

right price from the right partners at the right time. Regarding his overall role, “I make sure from a customer service perspective that business transactions operate seamlessly and ensure that employees and business partners are paid on time,” he says.

The Nashville native has certainly made the grade at Amherst, and he credits lessons learned by example from his parents, both of whom were schoolteachers.

“What intrigued me was their patience, dedication, knowledge, and their relationship-building,” he says. “My father passed away in 2014; he taught for thirty-eight years. He always had former students

calling him for advice, long after he had retired. At his funeral, I would say half of those in attendance were former students. My mother was the same way. You could see the personal impact they made.”

Johnson, too, considers himself a teacher when it comes to developing his staff. “It’s very important to teach and provide opportunities to develop,” he says. “In implementing initiatives on campus to drive cost savings, I have had to do a lot of training and teaching, not just for my staff but for the campus at large.”

Johnson was educated at Howard University. “My degree was in electrical

engineering. I have a bent toward the sciences and math; they fascinate me to this day,” he reveals. Following his graduation, Johnson worked for thirteen years in procurement engineering at Nortel, which ceased operations in 2009.

“Early during my career, I could see that if I was going to survive and thrive in corporate America, I would have to match my technical acumen with business acumen,” he explains. “While I fell in love with procurement engineering, I started to learn the procurement side of the business, which ultimately parlayed itself into becoming a procurement officer.”

Ralph Johnson Director of Shared Services & Procurement Amherst College

In 2010, Johnson became historic Morehouse College’s first chief procurement officer. After seven years there, he heard that Amherst was looking for someone to fill an open position.

“What I found attractive about Amherst,” Johnson reflects, “is the diversity of the student base. It is what America will be in 2050. This is inspirational as we also work to enhance our spend with diverse vendor partners to be much greater than its current level. Another thing I found attractive is that the procurement function had to be built from the ground up; there wasn’t a formal program in place.”

Johnson made “exponential improvements” to Amherst’s procurement using what he calls the three P s: partners, people, and the process. “It’s taken us a long way,” he says.

He describes his management style as highly collaborative. “I’ve been trained in the art of situational leadership,” he says, “not to be a chameleon but to ensure my leadership style fits the situation.”

At Amherst, Johnson initially sought to understand the culture and why things were the way they were. “I met with every member of the president’s cabinet to understand what their needs were,” he said. “I also solicited input from the key members of the different departments, the leaders and influencers of change. Gradually, I was able to establish relationships and start making things more efficient and optimized.”

Often, when someone new comes into a position seeking to effect change, they are

met with resistance. This was not the case at Amherst, Johnson says. His experience there has been marked by a sense of collaboration and enthusiasm, “from day one.”

“It speaks to the wonderful people at Amherst that they wanted to work with me,” he notes. “[The culture] is extremely team oriented and friendly. You get the feeling there is no employee left behind. When there is an established goal, we hold hands, lock arms, and get there together. There is no problem too big or too tough.”

Among his many accomplishments at Amherst, Johnson is perhaps most proud of his role in the implementation of the Workday ERP system, a tool that stores and organizes information and data, allowing his team to streamline everything from the payment of bills to the tracking of leaves of absences. He was responsible for the implementation of the procurement, supplier accounts, and expenses modules, while his team was responsible for implementing the payroll, absence, and time-tracking modules.

He is also proud of the development plans that are in place for his staff, and the implementation of a travel portal, a system by which employees traveling on behalf of the college can make reservations and pay for most expenses up front so that they do not have to place them on their personal cards.

And that is what Johnson likes best about his job: the ability to help his team “see measurable results in terms of how we are improving things for the college. I do it because I love it,” he says.

“When there is an established goal, we hold hands, lock arms, and get there together. There is no problem too big or too tough.”

RALPH JOHNSON

The Caruso Legal Legacy

By DONALD LIEBENSON

Bill Caruso once thought of himself as “a math and science guy,” but he had an epiphany while taking an organic chemistry class his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Rote memorization of carbon formulas was not something I found exciting,” he says with a laugh.

As DeVry University general counsel, Bill Caruso carries out his family’s commitment to community and helps the university weather the COVID-19 pandemic

Bill Caruso General Counsel, Secretary, and VP of Regulatory Affairs DeVry University

Kimberly Kingen

He turned his attention to law. “It was the natural choice,” he notes. “My parents always said I had an affinity for reading, writing, and especially talking. I was drawn to the intellectual rigor and challenge of it, and the fact that there are no right answers.”

In fact, Caruso was born to the breed. His grandparents and parents were lawyers. His three siblings are also lawyers, and Caruso specializes in highly regulated industries. For the past eleven years, the industry has been education. He is the general counsel, secretary, and vice president of regulatory affairs at DeVry University in Chicago, and for eight months during the pandemic, he served as DeVry’s interim president.

DeVry University is celebrating its ninetieth anniversary this year. Caruso was drawn to the university, he says, in large part by its mission: DeVry University strives to close our society’s opportunity gap by preparing learners to thrive in careers shaped by continuous technological change. Through innovative programs, relevant partnerships, and exceptional care, DeVry empowers students to meaningfully improve their lives, communities, and workplaces. “We do that

by convincing people that they can. They may have tried college and failed or never thought they could do it. It’s our mission to help them be successful.”

DeVry’s mission is very much of a piece with Caruso’s social justice and equal opportunity bent, something else instilled in him by his family. His grandmother graduated from Northwestern University in the mid-1930s, when there were fewer opportunities for women in the law, he reflects. She became the director of Chicago’s Legal Aid Bureau and pioneered closer relationships with local social service organizations to help the fledgling immigrant population with such priority issues as healthcare, food, and housing.

His grandfather, who had a small law practice with his brother, spent a lot of time with his wife helping combat segregation in their community, Caruso says.

Caruso’s father started his career at the law firm Sidley & Austin when the number of lawyers was in double, rather than quadruple, digits. He was the first general counsel of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, founded in 1966, after

“[People] may have tried college and failed or never thought they could do it. It’s our mission to help them be successful.”

BILL CARUSO

Martin Luther King’s Chicago Freedom Movement to address housing discrimination in Chicago.

He is one of the country’s foremost fair housing experts, Caruso notes. Caruso proudly remembers watching his father present oral arguments in one of his two cases before the Supreme Court.

When asked if he is consciously carrying forward the torch of what his family did, Caruso agrees, and adds, it’s about “the lack of satisfaction in just getting a paycheck and not having a more important goal and mission.” That, he says, is what he liked so much about previous employers AT&T— where he spent nearly a decade as a senior attorney—and Caremark, another in-house position at which he would work extensively on shaping the company’s compliance policies and programs.

“What are we doing other than putting widgets in the box?” he frames the question as to what motivates him. “What are we doing other than making money?”

In his role, Caruso is responsible for all of DeVry’s legal needs, including human resources, governance, real estate litigation,

and intellectual property, as well as regulatory affairs, student financial services, internal audit, and government relations and public policy. He leads a team of more than seventy people.

One of the biggest challenges Caruso faced in his career was when he was asked to step in as interim president in January 2020 while DeVry searched for a new president. “Our board decided that I would be the best option,” he says. “My colleagues on the leadership team trusted me; they knew me for not taking sides but honestly advising and listening. Our board felt that a calm and collaborative approach was what was needed to move DeVry forward and maintain momentum during the transition.”

Caruso is proud that DeVry “didn’t miss a beat,” he says. “We sent everyone home on March 11 and 12,” he recalls. “We were fortunate to be extremely well prepared for remote work, the result of a very bad experience during the massive snowstorm ten years ago that closed our operations in the Chicago area for two days. All of our colleagues were already outfitted with the necessary technology to be able to work

“The minute you think you know everything is the minute you begin losing.”

BILL CARUSO

from home, so all we had to do was tell colleagues to grab a monitor and a keyboard.”

The collaboration needed to see DeVry through is at the heart of Caruso’s core leadership philosophy. “Humility is critical,” he says. “The minute you think you know everything is the minute you begin losing. The good news was that I certainly didn’t know everything, and so I focused on listening, learning, and gaining consensus.”

He doesn’t think that his time as interim president changed his leadership style. “In my view, a key to being a successful in-house lawyer is that you need to have an opinion,” he says. “Giving advice is about options and implications. When your CEO asks what they should do, if you’re an outside lawyer, you can say, ‘I don’t have an opinion. I’m just giving you the options based on your risk tolerance.’

“As an in-house lawyer,” he continues, “my view is that you bring the most value when you step up and say, ‘I know the business, I know the challenges, opportunities, and risks. I’ve laid out for your four or five viable options, but I have an opinion that this option is the better option.’”

Now in his third decade in law, Caruso occasionally runs into someone who knew his parents, and the encounters reminds him of the legacy for good he upholds.

“They’ll ask if I’m related,” he says. When he answers in the affirmative, the response is always the same: big smiles and “‘They’re the greatest people in the world.’”

Husch Blackwell LLP: “Bill is a forward thinking leader, who makes strategic decisions that align with institutional mission and the needs of students. Bill has deep-seated passion and dedication in supporting and serving students through innovative higher education. That passion and talent shines through in his commitment and work as General Counsel at DeVry University.”

–Lisa J. Parker, Partner

Congratulations Bill Caruso on this well-deserved honor and Happy 90th Anniversary DeVry! Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila LLP is proud to be a strategic partner to your team and celebrate your innovative and impactful work. Fortune 100 and other market-leading businesses turn to RSHC’s elite trial teams, litigators, and C-Suite advisors to handle their most pressing challenges.

Eyes on the Community

By

These days, people change employers seemingly as often as they change their socks. But Mitch Melfi is a bit of an outlier. For about thirty years, he’s held top legal positions at a single company—albeit one that’s transformed itself several times through expansions and acquisitions.

CommonSpirit Health is the largest Catholic health ministry and among the nation’s largest nonprofit healthcare systems, serving twenty million patients across more than a thousand care sites in twenty-one states. Melfi’s accountabilities as senior executive vice president and chief legal officer include all legal services (including mergers and acquisitions), enterprise risk management, corporate governance matters, and sponsorship.

Throughout his tenure at CommonSpirit, Melfi has leveraged his legal expertise and institutional knowledge to support the

As the chief legal officer of the country’s largest Catholic healthcare system, Mitch Melfi never loses sight of CommonSpirit Health’s commitment to the people it serves

FREDERICK JERANT

organization’s mission of improving the health of the people it serves, especially those who are vulnerable.

FROM PREMED TO HEALTHCARE LAW

Melfi’s interest in the medical field dates to at least his junior high days. He was exposed to aspects of healthcare through his dad, who was a dentist, and he had dreams of becoming a surgeon.

“When I was in high school, my dad learned from a colleague that a local hospital was looking for someone to work in the housekeeping department on weekends,” he says. “I got the job and was grateful to be in an actual healthcare setting.”

That interest stayed with Melfi well into college, as a zoology major in the premed curriculum at the Ohio State University. But during his sophomore year, he had a revelation. “I was sitting in an organic chemistry lab and realized I didn’t share the same passion for the subject matter as those around me,” he explains. “It occurred to me that I could make a greater impact in

the healthcare space, which I was passionate about, in support of clinical services rather than performing clinical services.”

Law school beckoned, and he entered the JD program at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. His relationship with nearby Children’s Hospital continued during that time, as he worked as a unit administrator during the day and attended classes at night.

In the early 1980s, Paul Greve was serving as the first general counsel at Children’s. “I’d known him since I was in law school,” Melfi says. “When he asked me to serve as staff counsel, I took that job. I cut my teeth in that space, and Paul was an amazing mentor to me.” Just eighteen months later, Greve moved on, and Melfi took over as general counsel.

For the next several years, Melfi and his wife Debbie, a pediatric nurse, worked at Children’s Hospital. During this time, Melfi not only grew professionally but supported the healthcare community in other ways as well. Through the hospital’s affiliation with Ohio State, Melfi taught a class at the

“It occurred to me that I could make a greater impact in the healthcare space, which I was passionate about, in support of clinical services rather than performing clinical services.”

MITCH MELFI

Mitch Melfi Senior EVP and Chief Legal Officer CommonSpirit Health

medical school and served as a guest lecturer on healthcare topics at his law school alma mater.

He later wound up on the short list of candidates for a new position at the Sisters of Charity Health Care System in Cincinnati— one with the combined duties of associate general counsel and the enterprise risk management and self-insurance programs. In healthcare settings, enterprise risk management includes loss prevention, while self-insurance is a common way to protect against professional liability claims.

Melfi saw that as a real growth opportunity. It was a $2 billion, multistate operation, so he and his family moved to Cincinnati in 1992.

EXPONENTIAL TRANSFORMATION

Melfi’s perception of growth was on the money. In 1996, the Sisters of Charity Health Care System (along with three other Catholic systems) consolidated their operations to form Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI). “I helped put the merger together,” Melfi says. “At its time, it was the largest provider merger in history, with a value of $4 billion.”

Over time, CHI acquired several other healthcare operations. Then, in 2019, CHI merged with Dignity Health to form the $29 billion CommonSpirit Health, which to date, is the largest provider merger in history.

“Our M&A activity is grounded in our mission: improving the health of the people

we serve, especially those who are vulnerable, while we advance social justice for all,” Melfi says. “It might entail acquisitions, joint ventures, partnerships, or management services—all to create networks of care across more than one thousand care sites.

“Most people don’t realize that nonprofit hospitals not only operate on very slim margins, but we must also bring in enough revenue to cover the costs of providing healthcare services,” he continues. “Operating with good business practices, including controlling expenses carefully, enables us to sustain our healthcare services.”

The majority of services for which Melfi is responsible are provided in-house; however, Melfi believes it is necessary to form external partnerships as well. For example, Melfi shifted services that are needed only occasionally to contractors instead of staff positions. This not only enables CommonSpirit to control costs but also engage the best expert for the specific task at hand.

In addition, as chief legal officer, Melfi sometimes consults with a canon lawyer, a lawyer who has special training in and knowledge of the Catholic Church’s laws.

COMMUNITIES ACROSS STATE LINES

CommonSpirit reaches twenty million people across the US, and a platform of that size enables it to be a strong advocate on its own behalf. “Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries,” he says, “and it’s not

“Our M&A activity is grounded in our mission: improving the health of the people we serve, especially those who are vulnerable, while we advance social justice for all.”

MITCH MELFI

The Common Good Needs a Champion

As a proud partner of CommonSpirit Health, Polsinelli celebrates one of those champions, Mitch Melfi, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, for his outstanding continued support of the health care industry.

Mitch’s strategic leadership and deep knowledge of the health care industry has been a significant contributing factor to the success of CommonSpirit Health. And, his strong commitment to the mission of CommonSpirit Health has helped improve the health and well-being of communities all across the country. Mitch is a one in a million executive and we salute him for the positive impact he continues to make.

Leaders stand out.

real challenges. real answers.SM

Am Law 100 firm with 900 attorneys nationwide 21 offices from LA to NY 170+ services/industries polsinelli.com

Polsinelli is very proud of the results we obtain for our clients, but you should know that past results do not guarantee future results; that every case is different and must be judged on its own merits; and that the choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements. Polsinelli PC. Polsinelli LLP in California.

just one set of rules; there are federal and individual state mandates that we must respond to. And we must also be prepared to deal with changes or expansions to those laws. When necessary, we can offer input to pending legislation or speak up on topics of concern.”

That immense platform enables CommonSpirit to advocate on behalf of the various communities it serves, addressing pressing issues such as health inequities, social justice, and services for underserved populations. “This gives us a real connection to the mission of the organization, and its values,” he says. Those values include compassion, inclusion, integrity, excellence, and collaboration.

“More than being an extraordinary attorney, Mitch is a compassionate leader whose dedication to advancing CommonSpirit’s core mission has made a positive impact on communities across the country,” says CommonSpirit outside counsel Dan Reinberg, a shareholder of Polsinelli PC.

honigman.com

Melfi continues to benefit the community by serving on the board of directors of several nonprofit healthcare systems in Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, California, and Illinois.

“It’s been an amazing journey for me,” he concludes. “I have never once regretted the decision I made that day sitting in the organic chemistry lab. I started out as acting GC for a $2 billion operation and am now chief legal officer for one that’s nearly fifteen times bigger, but more important to me, I’d like to think I have helped make a positive impact on the health of the communities we serve.”

At Crowe, our approach focuses on achieving a client return on the investment to operate internal audit and compliance functions. The new normal of strategic risk coverage includes achievement a return on risk. We are fortunate to innovating because of the vision of Mitch Melfi and his relentless pursuit of a world class risk program at CommonSpirit Health.

Honigman is proud to recognize the contributions of Mitch Melfi to CommonSpirit Health and to the industry.

“Operating with good business practices, including controlling expenses carefully, enables us to sustain our healthcare services.”

MITCH MELFI

Donovan

Alger, Jonathan P88

American Airlines P47

Amherst College P167

Anderson, Amy P160

Apperson, Kevin P157

AT&T P77

Austin FC P82

Barnes & Noble

Education P68

Beiersdorf P122

Brauch, Douglas P64

Brenntag P134

Bridges Gilder, Susan P122

Bridgestone Americas P138

Broadfield, Donald P47

Carnival Corporation P142

Caruso, Bill P170

Chicago Minority Supplier

Development Council P8

City of Chicago P26

CommonSpirit Health P175

DeVry University P170

Eastman Kodak P100

Ebersold, Matthew P100 Ewing, Sheila P163

Gamoudi, Salah P103

Gerostathos, Nick P37 Google P108 Gympass P148

Hackemer, Heidi P58

Hagen, Eric P82

Hudson’s Bay Company P72

James Madison University P88

Johnson, Ralph P167

Kansas City Chiefs P92

King, Ginger P154

Kohler Company P154

L

Macy’s P64

Magic Johnson Enterprises P163

Maheshwari, Aditya P43

Mallette, Brooke P77

Mattole, Donovan P134

Maverik P130

Maxim Healthcare Group P157

Melfi, Mitch P175

Miller, Jeffrey P92

Miller, Marquis P26

Minnesota Wild P96

Moore, Ralph G. P20

Newpark Resources P34

Oatly P58

Parker, Melonie P108

Pitzenberger, Leah P96

Primo, Diane P14

Purpose Brand P14

R

Ralph G. Moore Associates P20

Ribeiro, Renata P142

Rogina, Joyce P68

RSA Security P37

Salenetri, Nikki P148

Sallie Mae P40

SandRidge Energy P103

Savage X Fenty P118

Schwartz, David P72

Seals, Ali P112

Shearman & Sterling P52

Sheehan, Michael P40 Stokes, Shannon P34

Terrell, Chantel P118

Tindall, Towanna P126

Trulite Glass & Aluminum Solutions P126

Under Armour P43

Venbrook Group P151

Volkert P160

Weyerhaeuser P112

Williams-Range, Meredith P52

Williams, J. Vincent P8

Wolff, Mira P151

Lazerus, Kim P130 Long, Susie P138

Sara DiCicco (Mattole), Steven Vargo (Lazerus)

Kim Lazerus, VP of HR, Maverik 130

Mattole, VP of HR for Americas, Brenntag 134

KEY DEI MOMENTS

A look back on how diversity, equity, and inclusion has evolved in the workplace

1948

President Harry Truman officially desegregates the armed forces with Executive Order 9981

1974

Black employees at Xerox form the first employee resource groups

1991

63% of major firms offer diversity training, according to a Conference Board study

1964

The Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for any business, private or public, to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is established

1987

Secretary of Labor William Brock commissions Workforce 2000, sponsored by the Hudson Institute

2009

Ursula Burns is named the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act strengthens protections against pay discrimination

2016

CEO activism rises as more than 90 executives speak out against North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law

2018

2021

55% of CEOs have incorporated DEI into corporate strategy, not just talent strategy, according to the Fortune/ Deloitte CEO Survey

145 Fortune 500 companies have at least 40% diversity on their boards, up from 69 in 2012 Sources: Center for Talent Innovation; Vox

YOUR BUSINESS RUNS ON KNOWLEDGE. RUN FASTER.

It’s time to make knowledge work.

Knowledge is the fuel on which all business runs. Its beating heart. Knowledge gives you an edge.

iManage is the knowledge work platform that helps organizations to uncover and activate the knowledge that exists in their business content and communications. With the power of context, iManage goes beyond basic productivity, empowering teams to demonstrate high-value expertise and businesses to prosper.

To find out how we can make your knowledge work harder for you visit: www.imanage.com/makingknowledgework