Profile Magazine Q3/22

Breakers

Nine women on what it takes to drive business innovation and build diverse teams within the technology industry P76

Bruce Mathews transforms Resideo

after its spin-off from Honeywell P40

Guest

Meet the Guest Editor

Christine Vanderpool believes that every person should have a mission statement. Hers is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi: “The sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have but how many leaders you create.” Throughout her time in cybersecurity at Kaiser Permanente, Molson-Coors, and now Florida Crystals, Vanderpool has kept up with the everchanging technology environment and lifted up others along the way.

P78

Living His Dream

Ramana Thumu combines his passion for sports and technology to lead the tech team behind Fanatics’ robust digital ecosystem

P16

The Value of Empathy

As head of global talent acquisition, Sara Fatima prioritizes company values in her approach to recruitment at Verifone

P45

Foundation of Communication

Rebecca Guenther leans on strong leadership and focuses on internal development to aid Beztak Properties’ rapid expansion

P51

Reimagining University Retail

Get in the Game

Sports enthusiast Kate Sheets creates partnerships that power AEG, the biggest name in stadiums and live events

P69

Step It Up

At Fossil Group, Sheri Crosby Wheeler is on a mission to change corporate America and make room for those who have felt left out

P114

Piloting IT through Growth

CISO James Nolin provides a look into Spirit Airlines’ aggressive growth plan by uniting people, processes, and technology

P122

Setting a Global Vision

Editor’s Letter P7

Index P137

After an important digital transformation, CFO Thomas Donohue has remade Barnes & Noble Education to help digitally native students thrive

P60

How Alexandre França leverages his global finance expertise to help Natura &Co transform the controllership function

P133

Love Story Photography (Florida Crystals Corporation), Joe Pollimeni (Beztak Properties), Kim Leeson (Fossil Group), Ethan Strong/AEG

ON THE COVER

For our Women in Tech issue, we wanted to lean into the technology aesthetic. Designer Anastasia Andronachi illustrated the interactive motherboard, which you can also see throughout the special section. P76

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From the Editor

In my senior year of college, I failed my online computer science 101 class. I had naively thought it would be an easy core requirement to fulfill for my degree.

From grade school through high school, I never really encountered any “girls in STEM” after-school programs. In junior high, there was a required technology class that had different modules centered on different areas of engineering and aerospace. By high school, I knew my strengths were in English and history.

So all I had going into the computer science class was basic HTML knowledge and some website design. My energy instead went into one of my final reporting classes.

There are times when I wonder what would’ve happened if I had pursued STEM classes or extracurriculars earlier in my education. Would I be working in the tech industry now instead of managing Profile?

It’s heartening to see the opportunities that are available to school-aged girls and young professionals. And to see how women are reaching back to help diversify a male-dominated industry.

Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool, vice president of IT strategy, architecture, and security at Florida Crystals, emphasizes the importance of building future leaders in STEM. She sits on the board and women’s committee of Tech Hub South Florida, a nonprofit that focuses on growing technical education programs in school systems as well as government and business environments.

“It’s the way of the future,” she notes. “The amount of devices that are all going to be interconnected is growing exponentially, and the need for more and more IT professionals is just going to continue to grow, too.”

The other women in our feature section also prioritize guiding future tech professionals. Affirm’s Hayley Gonzales is a board member for San Francisco Women in Tech and has created a mentorship program for diverse law students. At Instacart, Iris Birungi Peña is helping expand minority employee resource groups and build a diversity recruitment program. And RNDC’s Renee Pearson not only empowers other women in organizations like Women in Technology but also sits on the board for the nonprofit Inspiredu.

After failing computer science, I still had a credit to fill. I went the opposite direction of taking the easy way for my final semester and opted to take a logic 101 class. I put 100 percent effort into the course, going to group study sessions and making so many flashcards—more than I made for my German classes. I passed the class with a B-, and it’s one of the best class choices I could’ve made.

Frannie Sprouls Managing Editor

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TALENT

What is a company without those who lead it? Executives provide their blueprint for cultivating a successful career.

Conscious Leadership Drives Innovative Outcomes

John Curtin is a collaborative leader who shares Dyson’s openness to transform ways of working

By NATALIE KOCHANOV

John Curtin General Counsel, Americas

Dyson

Peter Hurley

As general counsel for the Americas at Dyson, John Curtin is conscious of his role as a leader within the global technology company, known for its home technology such as vacuum cleaners and personal care technology such as hair dryers and stylers. However, Curtin also recognizes that leadership is not a trait exclusive to managers.

“As a leader of the team, I provide my team members the opportunity to lead from their strengths, which not only helps them develop their individual leadership skills, but enriches our team as a whole,” Curtin says. “We’re as strong as the identity that we’re building not only within our own region but also globally across Dyson.”

Curtin has committed himself to developing that identity since coming on board at the company back in August 2021. He drives solution-oriented collaborations with colleagues in the US and abroad, relying on a nuanced understanding of international business culture to foster relationships across time zones.

“In our experience working with John, we find him to be an especially effective leader, because he empowers the lawyers in his group to make decisions and undertake tasks that increase their confidence levels,” says Ross Weisman, partner at Kirkland & Ellis.

Whether working on a regional or a global project, he brings a legal expertise

underwritten by years of experience both in-house and in private practice—and a steadfast belief in the benefits of taking professional risks.

Curtin began his career at Cleveland law firm Jones Day, where he learned the ropes as a corporate associate in the capital markets and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) group. “I had a great opportunity with them to work internationally in their Hong Kong office,” he adds.

An avid traveler, Curtin enjoyed his time representing clients in Southeast Asia. Still, he eventually wanted to return to the US. He landed at Katten Muchin Rosenman, a law firm in his hometown of Chicago. Walgreens became one of his regular clients at the firm, and he accepted a spot on the pharmacy chain’s in-house corporate team in 2007.

“That was my first professional fork in the road, making the shift from private practice to in-house,” Curtin says. “I was excited to focus on one client and understand the business issues and the industry from the inside. I felt as inside counsel, I would be better positioned to help frame legal solutions early in the process.”

Curtin spent over a decade at Walgreens, which had transformed into the global company Walgreens Boots Alliance during this tenure. He directed the company’s e-commerce, marketing, and technology group before becoming the first GC for the Americas at No7 Beauty Company, the company’s owned brand subsidiary. Building the business’ legal department from scratch

“Whether it is on the phone or in person, it’s important to find time for those touchpoints, to ensure we’re sharing best practices and aligning on our global legal department goals.”

JOHN CURTIN

prepared him to step into another inaugural GC role in 2019, this time outside Walgreens at the healthcare brokerage firm Triangle Healthcare Advisors.

When Curtin heard about an opening at Dyson, the opportunity to join the innovative, global company immediately appealed to him. Months later, that appeal has yet to wear off. “It’s been quite a whirlwind as we continue to expand our products in various categories. There were initially a number of open roles on my team, but we’re now fully staffed and well positioned to deliver Dyson’s ambitious growth targets [through] 2022 and beyond,” he says.

Curtin sees part of his job as translating Dyson’s overarching objectives down to the team level. “In managing my team, I’m responsible for delivery of the team’s goals, which, among other things, are to deliver high-quality, high-performing legal services and personal development plans. I really want to see my team succeed and, by extension, serve the business in the best way possible,” he elaborates. “Our team is growing together. As a newly formed team, my first task was to develop a team charter with everyone’s input. It was a great moment for us to establish our identity and set our culture.”

He empowers his team members to approach risk creatively and preemptively, with an emphasis on generating efficient, top-notch solutions for the business. For example, they are currently looking for ways to further streamline Dyson’s contracting

management process by identifying any stages of the process at which delays may occur under the existing model.

In addition to increasing efficiency, Curtin is concentrating on establishing strong relationships with colleagues in other parts of the world. The rise of videoconferencing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has helped, but Curtin is eager for travel to resume so he can attend in-person meetings.

“Right now, conversations and meetings with my colleagues overseas requires a good use of videoconferencing,” he says. “I am looking forward to the day where international travel opens up so that we can meet in person. Whether it is on the phone or in person, it’s important to find time for those touchpoints, to ensure we’re sharing best practices and aligning on our global legal department goals.”

Curtin’s own experience in Jones Day’s Hong Kong office and at Walgreens Boots Alliance gives him a leg up when it comes to connecting and empathizing with global colleagues. “I’ve really benefited from having worked internationally in terms of my ability to understand different viewpoints and, more importantly, cultures—how people work in other parts of the world,” he says. “Understanding how rules and regulations in different geographies differ is vital in delivering on our global business objectives.”

Beyond diverse perspectives, Curtin strives to remain open to opportunities,

“We’re as strong as the identity that we’re building not only within our own region but also globally across Dyson.”

JOHN CURTIN

The language of business.

We understand that our clients want pragmatic, actionable and informed guidance to help navigate the maze of employment challenges, and we’re here to help.

DLA Piper congratulates John Curtin on his new role as Dyson’s General Counsel, Americas. We look forward to continuing to support John and growing our longstanding global relationship with Dyson.

Business Savvy, Compassion, Excellence

Faegre Drinker is excited to join Profile magazine in celebrating Dyson General Counsel John Curtin. Since being named General Counsel, John has exhibited all of the characteristics of a modern General Counsel — expert legal skill combined with a savvy business sense and compassion and empathy for colleagues.

especially ones that push him outside his comfort zone. In fact, he believes his willingness to embrace the unfamiliar accounts for his career success—so much so that he seeks to instill the practice of taking on professional challenges in his colleagues at Dyson.

“I want my team members to feel comfortable exploring. The opportunities are certainly there within the company for them to expose themselves to new areas,” he says. “As a leader, I try to encourage and empower my team to take on new challenges and opportunities for growth within the company.”

dlapiper.com

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With Curtin himself continuing down that very path, the rest of the team is sure to be close behind.

Faegre Drinker: “It is such a privilege to work alongside John as he navigates his new role at Dyson. We have found him to be smart, decisive, and collaborative. We look forward to seeing the heights he and his team will scale at Dyson and congratulate him on this great honor.” —Cheryl

Orr, Partner

“I want my team members to feel comfortable exploring. . . . As a leader, I try to encourage and empower my team to take on new challenges and opportunities for growth within the company.”

JOHN CURTIN

Valley of Dreams

Ramana Thumu channels his dual passions for sports and technology to lead the tech team behind Fanatics’ robust digital ecosystem

By ZACH BALIVA

Ramana Thumu has built and implemented cuttingedge technology platforms, consulted at some of the world’s most innovative companies, and led teams for Silicon Valley’s most famous employers. But his emergence as a leader in the industry looked very different than that of many of his peers. In fact, he didn’t grow up with a computer in his home. He didn’t even have electricity.

Thumu was born in the southern part of India and remembers doing his homework by candlelight after sunset. His parents never had the benefit of an education and couldn’t read or write. His mom cared for the family while his dad worked on a farm.

“All they ever wanted for me was to pursue an education and have opportunities we could never have dreamed of,” Thumu says. “Their values and what they instilled in me shaped who I am today. I’m not sure I would’ve gotten through it all without my parents, siblings, wife, and kids by my side.”

Today, Thumu is the chief technology and product officer at Fanatics, the buzzworthy top global digital sports platform that’s extending its reach beyond e-commerce to

ignite fan passion and extend the presence and reach of partners across the broader sports landscape. He’s responsible for leading a very diverse team that builds the ecosystem that powers Fanatics’ end-toend data- and analytics-rich e-commerce and mobile platform, which counts all major professional leagues, 150 colleges and universities, and many of the biggest European soccer clubs as partners.

The journey from the Bay of Bengal to the Bay of San Francisco was a remarkable one. Thumu was a curious child who always excelled in mathematics, science, and problem-solving. After noticing his gifts and talents, his teachers put him in special programs designed to help top students.

“My career is bigger and greater than I might have imagined because I had mentors and managers who helped me maximize my potential. Other people believed in me from an early age, and that has been an important theme in my life and career. Now, I’m working hard to mentor and coach other tech leaders,” he says.

Even with strong support, Thumu faced real challenges that threatened to derail his progress. His education beyond the tenth grade would cost 5,000 rupees. The

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Ramana Thumu Chief Technology & Product Officer Fanatics

sum—less than $100—was an insurmountable obstacle for his family at the time. Thumu was discouraged, but his family refused to give up and found a way to get money for his tuition.

Thumu continued his education at Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering and the Indian Institute of Technology. He says he was fortunate to be hired in Tata Unisys as a programmer and worked on critical projects in his early years. After eighteen months of working in India, he traveled to San Jose, California, on a work visa.

It was 2000, and the Silicon Valley region was just starting to boom. Thumu quickly landed a new job writing code for a start-up internet communications platform. They scaled the business from eight to one hundred employees, and the early success

“My career is bigger and greater than I might have imagined because I had mentors and managers who helped me maximize my potential.”

RAMANA THUMU

Amy Ellis/Fanatics

AWS Congratulates Ramana Thumu

unlocked new opportunities. Soon, he was walking the halls of Cisco, PayPal, and eBay, where he was part of building e-commerce and advertising platforms from scratch and ultimately served as eBay’s senior director of product and technology.

By 2014, Thumu was looking for something new, and his services were in high demand. Although he had the opportunity to join well-established companies including Facebook, Google, and Apple, he chose to join Fanatics, which at the time was a predominantly North American sports e-commerce company. However, Fanatics Founder Michael Rubin and Fanatics Commerce CEO Doug Mack had a vision for building a new breed of consumer brand which the sports world had never seen before. That vision put technology, data, and analytics at the center of the company’s growth and innovation, and that is what prompted Thumu to join Fanatics at the time.

When Thumu joined, Fanatics had a valuation of $3.1 billion and had just cracked Internet Retailer.com’s Top 50 list. Today, the global company operates in eleven countries, runs six global technology centers, and is currently valued at $18 billion. Fanatics has been named one of Fast Company ’s Most Innovative Companies for the past several years.

“Fanatics had a special vision of techand data-driven innovation to transform the company and deliver the growth,” Thumu says. “I came to Fanatics to take all the experiences I accumulated in my life to date and unleash them by pulling together a world-class tech team to execute a clear and exciting vision.”

That’s what Thumu and his tech team have been doing ever since. Fanatics has heavily relied on the open-source, cloudbased, mobile-first tech stack developed in-house by Thumu and his team to power business growth and go beyond sportswear and merchandise. The company has amassed a database of more than eighty million sports fans and is rolling out new business lines to keep those fans engaged. What they’ve built together is truly special, and in some ways, they’re just getting started.

The new Fanatics global sports digital platform includes Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, Fanatics Betting and Gaming, and Candy Digital by Fanatics (NFTs). “I harbored a love for sports and competition as early as childhood. Fanatics has given me the ideal vehicle to channel my dual passions for sports and technology,” Thumu says.

When it comes to leadership, it is all about doing the right thing under all circumstances. Thumu has special emphasis on the culture within Fanatics, which he says has been instilled in him since day one by Mack. He recognizes the skill and talent of those around him, empowers decision-making at all levels, encourages risk-taking, and works to remove any bureaucratic obstacles that stand in the way of innovation.

Although it’s been more than twenty years since Thumu left India, he still stays in close touch with his family. “My parents told me to get an education and follow my dreams,” he says. “And that’s exactly what I’ve done.”

“I came to Fanatics to take all of the experiences accumulated in my life to date and unleash them by pulling together a world-class tech team to execute a clear and exciting vision.”

RAMANA THUMU

On the well-deserved recognition you are receiving as a leader in technology, business, and sports.

AWS is proud of its relationship with Fanatics and looks forward to continuing to help Fanatics deliver the best experience for sports fans across the globe.

The EQ of IT

Mike Hamilton leads IT at Databricks with a people-first mantra and commitment

By BILLY YOST

Mike Hamilton is the IT expert to ask because he’s done it all. Build an IT organization from scratch? He’s done it, twice. Successfully navigate employees from fearing technology in the early 2000s to helping them demand more from their experience? He’s done it. Transition from technical expertise to leadership, while recognizing just how valuable people are to any tech infrastructure? Absolutely.

THE RIGHT FOCUS

Hamilton has been in the field long enough to have watched the long evolution of technology in the workplace. While evolving along with it, Hamilton says there’s a constant that remains as true as it did a decade ago.

“The life lesson I’ve learned in my career in technology is that it’s not really about the technology,” explains Hamilton, who is

the vice president and head of IT at enterprise software company Databricks. “This entire IT field is about people. It’s about the people that use the technology. It’s about the people that serve the technology to the business and make sure it’s running. It’s about the people that create the technology for the business.

“Technology changes all the time,” he continues. “But the people are the constant.”

In stark contrast to the stereotypical quiet IT guy, Hamilton says the field has moved far past the old image. In fact, to succeed on Hamilton’s team, you need to be more than a skilled technician—you need to be a communicator.

“I look for people who have a high EQ [emotional quotient] and understand that what we’re building is for people,” Hamilton says. “When you hire people with strong EQs, you ultimately need fewer people overall, and you’re not just throwing bodies at a problem. To really understand what the

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Mike Hamilton

VP and Head of IT Databricks

business needs requires listening and guiding the stakeholders. What is needed often differs greatly from what is being asked.”

BREAKING DOWN SILOS

One of Hamilton’s major focuses over the past two years at Databricks has been helping the company become more interconnected. Having previously built out IT operations for MuleSoft, Hamilton has a key understanding for what a quickly moving company needs to get to the next level.

“All start-ups go through that period where individual departments work great within their lane, so it’s easy to keep the blinders on,” Hamilton explains. “CPQ is a project that wrecks that entire model.”

The “Configure, Price Quote” (CPQ) system helps ensure that products a company is selling are consistently quoted, and that customer entitlements created from that quoting process (and contractually obligated) can be appropriately billed. The process touches sales, legal, operations, the product team, and virtually every other part of the organization. In short, the blinders must come off.

“I look for people who have a high [emotional quotient] and understand that what we’re building is for people.”

MIKE HAMILTON

Julie Hamilton

“When you take a company that’s used to working in silos and take on a project of this magnitude, you have to realize it’s not just about technology. It’s more of a project around business processes, how those live within our system, and how you configure the systems to support those business processes,” Hamilton explains.

Given the expansive growth of Databricks, the expanded perspective is required, but it can be challenging for an organization that is quickly growing to also evolve its working style. But Hamilton says the company is committed to the change.

WINNING AS A TEAM

Hamilton’s own transition from an individual contributor to a leadership role has demanded the cultivation of a skill set that wasn’t necessarily the reason for his rise in the first place.

“I came to leadership after being used to being somebody’s right-hand person,” he explains. “When I became a leader, I realized that I have to identify as many of those right-hand people as I can. I had to be frank with myself that the paradigm of leadership has shifted, and I can’t expect to have all the answers all the time.

“I have to be able to trust my team because they have the detailed knowledge and understanding,” he continues. “My job is to guide their passion, knowledge, and energy toward

the results that will drive the success of our customers within the business.”

Hamilton says he prefers to act in a coaching role, helping develop his team to make good decisions and understand what motivates and fulfills team members as individuals. It’s part of a larger philosophy he employs: no heroes and no mercenaries.

“When you see companies that have that one person, the person that feels like they can never take time off because there’s too much on their plate,” he explains. “I don’t like it. I want to drive a culture where the team looks to develop themselves through each other and to cross-pollinate skills. Nobody wins unless everybody wins.”

Maybe most importantly, Hamilton says he always keeps the same piece of advice handy: “The two flaws of human communication are that we assume we understand the other person and that we assume we’re being understood by the other person.”

“It just comes down to people, again,” Hamilton reaffirms. “I tell my team to ask questions and make sure that you’re on the same page before you even start working to find solutions.”

The technology will continue to change. Hamilton’s not worried about that. Because if he’s certain his team has the right skills to connect with the rest of the organization, any change is possible.

“I had to be frank with myself that the paradigm of leadership has shifted, and I can’t expect to have all the answers all the time.”

MIKE HAMILTON

THE RIGHT PARTNERS

When partnering with strategic technology consultants, Mike Hamilton says that he’d prefers to interact with the company’s leadership. This has allowed him to build and foster long-term engagements with companies such as CriticalRiver Inc, a company with rich expertise in tech including Salesforce, Oracle, business intelligence, data analytics, and cloud-based solutions.

“I like having a personal relationship with these companies, because I know that I’m going to get the same quality as if my team were doing it themselves,” Hamilton says. “These partners have been instrumental in helping drive success inside the business and making sure that our Salesforce technology is set up for long-term success.”

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In Pursuit of Solutions

Howard Rosen brings a lifetime of financial leadership to find new efficiencies at OpenText

By WILL GRANT

Howard Rosen has decades of global financial leadership experience and is always on the move in the pursuit of the next answer. The next solution to a problem.

When he joined OpenText, he leveraged his experience in leading significant ERP transformation projects to use a project management approach to his organization. With his team handling forty to fifty major initiatives happening at a time, Rosen saw the need for a better structure and more efficient engine.

“Treat every department with a dedicated project management lens,” explains the chief accounting officer (CAO). “Every project needs a charter, focus on what you are trying to achieve, an understanding of the issues, and continuous tracking. This will create discipline and the level of communication, clarity, and accountability needed, especially in a highly transformative environment.”

ROSEN’S BIG THREE

Communication is key, including frequency, tone, and content. Rosen said part of

what has made him so successful in his career is his willingness to follow a line of questioning all the way through, going “seven layers deep.”

In coming to any organization, Rosen immediately sets his sights on the same three issues: bottlenecks, duplicates, and gaps.

When Rosen joined OpenText, he spoke with numerous business partners to understand where the opportunities existed, asking two basic questions: what do we do well and where can we improve? The organization, processes, and systems need to be dissected and well understood to ensure that key decision-makers have all the best options available to make the choice.

“An important part of my role is to provide optionality, whether it’s creating opportunities for efficiencies or continuous value-add,” he says. “Accounting is not just about closing the books. It’s about providing information that is used across the organization to make key business decisions.”

When it comes to his approach to external partners, the CAO believes that it’s

not about the right firm but rather the right team. Too many times, new leaders bring in consultants to do the job that should be done themselves. Consultants can be critical to filling knowledge and expertise gaps. Rosen’s current mission to modernize his tax department is a testament to patiently finding what he calls “the best people that he has ever met.”

BRILLIANT BASICS

Looking ahead, Rosen’s push to find new efficiencies is leading the OpenText team to examine robotic process automation (RPA).

“I explain to my team that I’m going to take forty minutes worth of work off their desk so they can handle more important things,” he explains. “Every team member wants to focus on important value-added activities, so we recognize how important automation is in everything we do.”

Automating processes and tightening up efficiencies is part of a larger effort that Rosen calls Brilliant Basics. “It’s about taking our core foundation and making it super solid to ensure we can create exponential efficiencies. Before you are

going to automate, invest in the foundation. Then you will drive the highest quality without needing to reprogram or fix along the way.”

Rosen embraces a continuous improvement mindset based on three key principles: smarter, better, and faster. He believes in using the right terminology and relatable terms so that his teams can easily adopt a mindset and incorporate it into everyday situations. Rosen uses this approach not only to question current ways of working in a systematic way but to also motivate his team and create inclusivity.

Another unique approach adopted by the finance team at OpenText is to leverage Six Sigma. “This enables our finance teams to create the critical mindset needed to consciously think about process improvement.” With the company and function growing immensely over the past decade, coupled with the vast improvements in technology, Rosen often tells his team that “it’s important to remember that what got us here is not necessarily going to get us where we want to go.”

COLLEGE CREDITS

Howard Rosen has been improving the financial situations of institutions since before he graduated college. He was one of the founders of the Georgetown University Alumni & Student Federal Credit Union, which was officially chartered in 1983. Today, that organization has over $17 million in assets, two ATMs on campus, and an extensive list of alumni interns who have gone on to extremely successful financial careers.

“This started with me doing the books by hand. And now two of my daughters have both worked there, with one serving as chief operating officer,” Rosen says. “To see it flourishing after thirty years is pretty incredible.”

“Accounting is not just about closing the books. It’s about providing information that is used across the organization to make key business decisions.”

HOWARD ROSEN

WE FIND VALUE IN LEADERSHIP.

Valuation Research Corporation knows that success is built upon a foundation of forward-thinking, tenacious, visionary leadership. On behalf of VRC, we congratulate a true leader, Howard Rosen, on his many achievements.

Since 1975, VRC has delivered supportable conclusions of value to domestic and international clients of all sizes and types. Our well-credentialed professionals are proud to work with leading public companies to focus our expertise on delivering objective and practical valuation opinions that withstand scrutiny.

We exceed your expectations for transparent, fair value-based nancial and tax reporting requirements, and implement sound valuation programs that satisfy regulators and give investors con dence.

When it comes to recruiting today, finance leaders at the company look for people who have a strong propensity for technology, science, and data. Rosen looks at these people as “technologists:” someone who embraces innovation and can create ways to do their

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During the pandemic, Rosen was constantly looking for gaps that were created through virtual work. He quickly implemented virtual “stand-up” meetings where his team would huddle together daily during critical projects. This allowed for key people on the project to get together for fifteen minutes to stake stock in the project status, identify key blockers, ensure everyone understands the key mission for the day along with

“It’s amazing what a daily stand-up can do to bring the team together when you can’t walk by someone’s office anymore,” he says. “A formal forum for communication where you can hold your team members accountable and align on critical goals is key in our

This is just another example of Rosen’s transformative mindset. “It’s what I do and what keeps me energized every day.”

“Before you are going to automate, invest in the foundation. Then you will drive the highest quality without needing to reprogram or fix along the way.”

VRC CELEBRATES OUR STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH HOWARD ROSEN

Leaving on a High Note

How Nora Pincus helped Boart Longyear recapitalize the more than century-old mining services and products company as its chief legal officer and general counsel

By DONALD LIEBENSON

Scrappy—that’s how Nora Pincus describes herself. “Scrappy” is what motivated her to begin college at sixteen. It’s what inspired her vow to become the general counsel of a public company by the time she was forty. And it’s what steeled her initially when she entered the mining industry as a private practice lawyer before transitioning in-house at mining services and products company Boart Longyear as its chief legal officer and general counsel.

In a traditionally male-dominated industry, Pincus often found herself the only woman in the room. The looks she got suggested: What does this young woman know about these high-dollar transactions? Shouldn’t she be a briefcase carrier?

To her clients, though, she was golden. “I always had support from clients who saw

“I knew I wanted to work on the big stuff. Big deals are more fun.”

NORA PINCUS

Courtesy of Boart Longyear

Nora Pincus

Former Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel Boart Longyear

NORA PINCUS

how hard I worked and believed in me,” she said. “They saw something in me and were willing to let me run first chair on large transactions that would typically be staffed by an older man. But, I’ve always felt I had to work harder, and be tougher, to prove myself to opposing counsel and show I was someone you need to take seriously.”

Most recently, Pincus’s scrappiness compelled her to announce she would be leaving Boart after what she calls “an extraordinary sixteen months.” She’s going out on a high note of unprecedented achievement as part of the team that successfully recapitalized the 131-year-old company and put it on solid financial footing for its next century.

There was little in Pincus’s background that indicated she would become a lawyer and carve herself a niche in the mining industry. She grew up in Montana, the daughter of transplanted East Coasters. Her father is a professor, and her mother largely raised her children while also running a public access PBS station and was a script supervisor for commercials and a couple feature films.

As for Pincus, she did not take to high school. “I just didn’t want to be a child anymore,” she says. She earned her GED and attended Montana State University at the age of sixteen. It was at college, she says, that she began to think about pursuing a career in law. She was influenced in part by an internship and eventual part-time role with the American Civil Liberties Union. “The concept of fundamental fairness, justice, and serving the underserved were always important to me,” she says.

Her original inclination was to be a criminal defense lawyer, but a summer

internship with a district court was enough to make her realize that it was not for her. “What I do now is very different than what I thought I would do when I went to law school,” she says with a laugh.

Boart was Pincus’s first in-house position, a professional progression that she pursued. She cites Rebecca Watson, with whom she worked on her first post-clerkship job, as a mentor. “She taught me that ambition is a positive thing and not something to be ashamed of,” Pincus says. “Many women in the workplace don’t lean into that in the same way men do. It’s OK to set goals that feel huge.”

Which is what led Pincus to move in-house. “I was a partner in a couple of law firms doing transactional work in the mining space,” she says. “I had achieved the things I wanted to do in a law firm. All in-house jobs are not created equal, though. Not all are as interesting as Boart.

“The mining industry is very global. I liked that aspect of it,” she continues. “Plus, mining is a capital-intensive industry, and I knew I wanted to work on the big stuff. Big deals are more fun.”

At Boart, she worked on the biggest deal in the company’s more than century-old history: the equitization of almost a billion dollars in debt—roughly 98.5 percent of the company—so that Boart could survive. It was a complicated transaction, “one of those where you live and die by outside counsel,” Pincus explains. It involved a least twenty-five law firms, seven of which worked on behalf of Boart, and seven financial advisors.

“Everyone wanted to get the same results,” she says. “Boart’s creditors have

“Many women in the workplace don’t lean into [ambition] in the same way men do. It’s OK to set goals that feel huge.”

a lot of faith in the company. While it was not able to service its debt, they saw a bright future for the company and doubled down with us. It was a completely consensual transaction.”

Today, Boart is active in thirty countries. The company moved its corporate domicile from Australia to Canada, but it is still headquartered in Salt Lake City.

What’s next for Pincus? After taking a few months off at the end of 2021 to “see friends and family, ride my bike, read books, ski powder, and, in the middle of all that, sit still for a moment,” Pincus also finished the year by starting as a managing partner at Nebari Holdings, a mining-centric private capital firm.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time in the mining industry as we make the switch to clean metals,” she explains. “I’m thrilled to be involved in the energy transition as we help bring capital to the companies building the infrastructure of the future.”

Congratulations Nora Pincus and Boart Longyear Group Ltd. for the well-deserved recognition you are receiving following your successful restructuring and continuance to Canada. Fasken is proud of its longstanding relationship with Boart Longyear and looks forward to continuing to act as your legal advisors in Canada.

Nora is a valuable partner to her business colleagues and to the company as it embarks on strategic changes. Nora offers practical and proactive advice, informed by deep legal expertise. As a full-service law firm with experience across multiple industries, Vinson & Elkins supports clients in anticipating, evaluating, mitigating, and preventing legal, regulatory, and compliance risks as they strive to achieve their strategic business goals.

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V&E, founded in 1917, is recognized as a premier law firm with diversified practices serving clients around the globe. Our lawyers provide strategic legal advice on our clients’ most challenging and complex transactional, regulatory and dispute resolution matters. We offer an integrated team of nearly 700 skilled lawyers in 12 global locations in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

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Fasken is proud to congratulate Nora Pincus on her tremendous achievement in leading and overseeing a complex, cross-border recapitalisation.

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Favorable Weather

Brian Roof helps launch new platforms and technologies at the Weather Group

By BILLY YOST

Brian Roof has gotten used to working in the middle of a hurricane. Roof is the senior vice president and chief counsel at the Weather Group, which includes the Weather Channel, Local Now, and the recently launched free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel Pattrn. He has helped pave the legal roads for the immersive mixed reality that allows Weather Channel hosts to illustrate—and often appear in or right next to—tornadoes, hurricanes, snowstorms, and other weather phenomena from the comfort of a studio.

While Roof isn’t on screen, he’s used to making big things happen behind the scenes.

He spent nearly eleven years at Cooper Holdings and oversaw a multitude of high-profile sports and entertainment initiatives, from helping launch the Justice Network and Quest channels to negotiating

multimillion-dollar employment, advertising, marketing, and sponsorship agreements for brands, teams, and players. If it’s a sports league that you’ve heard of, it’s likely Roof has navigated a deal.

“I had the opportunity to do so much, and I really loved being involved on the sports and media side,” Roof explains. “When the Weather Group job popped up, I became really interested in the new properties and initiatives the company was working on that make sense when you consider where media is going. It seemed like the perfect next step in my career.”

CHANGING WEATHER

Roof was also intrigued by the Weather Group’s owner, entrepreneur, and entertainment mogul Byron Allen. Working on properties for the Allen Media Group (AMG) seemed like it would never make for a boring day, and Roof says that’s exactly how it has played out.

Brian Roof SVP and Chief Counsel The Weather Group

“The team’s focus was to develop a product we could roll out quickly to consumers that also wouldn’t cost them any money.”

BRIAN ROOF

Elarbee Thompson is proud to serve as outside employment counsel for The Weather Group. Elarbee Thompson provides a broad spectrum of services, including immigration and representation in complex litigation matters, in addition to continuing its long tradition of partnering with clients on traditional labor and employment matters.

Roof oversees legal matters for channels like the Weather Channel and Local Now, but since coming to the company, he has also been able to help teams bring free and OTT (over-the-top) media outlets directly to consumers. The timing is intentional.

“When the pandemic hit, Local Now evolved from being a traditional linear channel to more of an entire entertainment platform,” Roof says. “The goal was to focus on the free side of content, as opposed to first coming out with another subscription model like a lot of other media companies were doing. The team’s focus was to develop a product we could roll out quickly to consumers that also wouldn’t cost them any money.”

In theory, it sounds great—but that meant immediately working to acquire free, ad-supported content along with movie titles and television shows to build out the platform. The tech team got to work redeveloping its application almost from scratch.

“Keep in mind this was done almost entirely remotely,” Roof says. “All of the development, software and content agreements, and privacy work was a huge task for everyone.”

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Roof has also helped launch Pattrn, which began as a mobile-first news platform that delivers content directly to Twitter. “Pattrn started out as an effort to communicate to a younger demographic about our

changing environment and climate on social media,” Roof explains. “Pattrn has evolved into a FAST channel dedicated to telling stories about climate challenges.”

LEADING IN NEW CLIMATES

The legal leader says while the past two years have been incredibly difficult with the COVID-19 pandemic, he has become more conscious than ever of the teams he leads. “I always stress to my team that they take their vacation and their PTO,” Roof says. “We’ve really leaned into the work-from-home environment, and I think it’s important that people find that balance of making sure they’re not burning themselves out.”

Roof has even taken on two new attorneys while working fully remote. It seems to fit the style of a chief counsel who believes that micromanaging his team is the surest way to fail. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day to manage that way, and it’s never been my approach,” the SVP says. “I’ve always told my team members that I’m going to give them the runway to do what they need to do. I’m always here for them.”

The SVP is used to working big deals, but when he’s not on the clock, he can most likely be found working a shovel or a rake. Roof is an avid landscaper who says that the touch of the soil provides its own kind of therapy— as long as it’s not raining. Luckily, he has a fast track to the forecast.

“I’ve always told my team members that I’m going to give them the runway to do what they need to do. I’m always here for them.”

BRIAN ROOF

Elarbee ompson is pleased to recognize Brian Roof for his legal expertise at e Weather Group.

True Transformation

Sheila Bridge leverages her skills of improving IT systems and processes to help True Value find an edge in the competitive retail space

By ZACHARY BROWN

One small bit of parental wisdom changed the course of Sheila Bridge’s life forever. Bridge was born and raised in Jamaica and came to the United States armed with an undergraduate degree in business administration and management. It was time to look for a job, and Bridge’s mom suggested a phone company.

“She assumed it would be steady employment in an evolving field filled with the latest devices,” Bridge recalls. She took the advice and landed a job that put her on a path to technology and IT. More than thirty years later, Bridge is known as a visionary IT leader and is helping True Value’s CIO move operations to the cloud and update the wellknown hardware company.

“Much of this company was homegrown and built from scratch . . . It’s time for us to innovate to keep it moving forward.”

SHEILA BRIDGE

As senior director and chief of staff in the office of the CIO, Bridge acts as CIO John Armbrecht’s right hand and go-to partner. She presents department goals to the board, leads key internal teams, and solves problems that arise. Most importantly, she works with the CIO on long-term strategy including three- and five-year plans. Those plans include a total transformation to modernize an outdated technology infrastructure.

True Value is a hardware wholesaler with 4,500 independently owned retail locations. Owners, managers, and employees in each of those locations operate tablets, computers, point-of-sale systems, and other devices that collect payment information and consumer data that gets sent back to the corporate office. Most of the software, networks, and applications they use were built twenty years ago. Bridge is helping implement the plan that will revamp the entire organization.

In 1916, John Cotter opened a small neighborhood hardware store when he was just twelve years old. Thirty-two years later,

he formed a cooperative with twenty-four other member stores, and in 1963, Cotter acquired the True Value trademark. He spent the next years and decades making the company into what it is today. In 1997, Cotter & Company and Servistar Coast to Coast merged to create a massive buying group. In 2018, ACON Investments acquired a majority stake in the company.

Now, True Value has over $10 billion in annual retail sales and a presence in more than sixty countries. The company also has an ambitious and aggressive growth plan—a plan that relies on the transformation Bridge, Armbrecht, and the IT department have underway. “Much of this company was home-grown and built from scratch, and that includes the technology that powers the business,” Bridge says. “It’s time for us to innovate to keep it moving forward.”

To do so, Bridge will rely on the personality, skills, experiences, and persistence she’s used to thrive as a woman in the male-dominated worlds of business and technology. She was once working an entrylevel administrative position at AT&T when

someone asked if she wanted a “man’s job.” Bridge accepted, and soon found herself the lone woman climbing telephone poles and soldering connections.

That wasn’t the last time Bridge volunteered for unusual assignments. She took the Berger analytical test and demonstrated an aptitude for logic. AT&T sent her to programming school to learn COBOL, and she landed a new job in payroll, grew in the company, and became an expert in the math-based PL/I computer language.

As Bridge outperformed other (mostly male) programmers, she received promotions and started managing tech teams and leading IT organizations at Alcatel-Lucent, Kellogg, and SC Johnson. Along the way, she earned professional certifications and an MBA. In 2015, she joined True Value to lead IT procurement, governance, and financial management.

Bridge transitioned to her current role to support Armbrecht in 2017. A broad transformation strategy was already set in motion, but many factors have accelerated that plan in the last three years. “The

“The world is changing, and we are a different company now. We have to improve systems, processes, and workflows to change how we collect and manage data and do most other things in an increasingly competitive space.”

SHEILA BRIDGE

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world is changing, and we are a different company now,” Bridge says. “We have to improve systems, processes, and workflows to change how we collect and manage data and do most other things in an increasingly competitive space.”

It’s all about reducing costs and redundancy while increasing productivity and revenue streams. Bridge, who has deep training in Lean Six Sigma methodologies, examined partners, vendors, systems, and maintenance plans to find opportunities for improvement. She also built the financials around the plan and met with True Value executives to get buy-in.

First, IT outsourced support and transformed financial management through Oracle. Now, they are migrating IT infrastructure to the cloud to eliminate large and expensive on-premises data centers scattered in strategic locations across the United States.

“It’s an honor to partner with True Value’s team to align their HR and workforce management technology to their transformative new strategy: to empower leaders to make informed decisions,” says Vicki Hill, CEO of Mosaic Consulting Group.

The outcomes from the transformation are already starting to appear. Not so long ago, managers used phones and even fax machines to place orders. With a standardized order capture system already in the cloud, they can now see product pictures, move items into a cart, and check out online.

Bridge’s team is creating a better customer experience and capturing data that leaders can use to make better business decisions. As they continue to implement the strategy, they’ll reduce costs and increase efficiencies even more and help True Value do battle with its top online and brick-andmortar competitors.

THE NEW IT LEADERS

As Sheila Bridge approaches her eventual retirement, she’s thinking about those who will take her place and is keenly aware of what she calls her “duty and responsibility” to help prepare others for IT leadership.

Millennials, she says, are starting with a much better foundation and have “everything they need at their fingertips.” They are creative, innovative, passionate, and skilled. They are fast-moving and nimble early adopters of all kinds of gadgets, devices, and technologies. While that will serve the generation well, Bridge says it does have some noticeable setbacks in communication style.

Younger professionals who favor texting over talking need to learn how to communicate and give professional presentations to share vision and strategy with leaders and business partners.

“I’m so impressed by what these people can do with technology. They have my generation beat by a mile,” Bridge says. “But I want them to make sure they round out some of these other skills. Then they will become unstoppable.”

Wavicle Data Solutions congratulates Sheila Bridge on this well-deserved honor. Working together, we launched a bleeding edge, cloud-based ordering platform that utilizes web scraping, machine learning, and data science to provide True Value stores with a faster, easier, and significantly more accurate ordering experience.

STRATEGY

Subject-matter

The Transformer

How CIO Bruce Mathews leverages exceptional team culture, technology, change management, and process optimization expertise to transform Resideo IT, following the company’s spin-off from Honeywell

By KEITH LORIA

Bruce Mathews CIO Resideo

Courtesy of Bruce Mathews

Growing up in South Africa, Bruce Mathews became interested in computer technology early on. “Ever since I can remember, I was interested in technology— specifically information technology,” says Mathews, who is currently the CIO at Resideo. “I got my first computer and was so fascinated by what it could do and the possibilities for how it could change our lives. That may have been a little dramatic for a teenager, but I started messing around with programming and couldn’t wait to see the impact it could make.”

He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, and later his master’s degree in information and knowledge strategy at Columbia. Throughout his career, Mathews has taken his passion for IT and used it effectively to drive business outcomes.

“It’s really an inspiration that I developed at high school and took through university and the military, into my career and to where I am today,” he explains. “There have been a couple of inflection points in my career where I could have done one thing, but I did something else.”

In the late nineties, Mathews was working as a consultant in South Africa for an established reseller of a midrange software solutions company headquartered outside London, where he would travel from time to time for work. Although the business was thriving, he took a chance to join a start-up consulting business, but his desire to get international experience soon won out.

“One of my goals was to see the world, and that’s something that my career has definitely helped me do,” Mathews shares. “I’ve worked all over Europe and Asia, and I spent a lot of time working with clients across the United States. This has been really rewarding and helped me grow personally and professionally.”

He accomplished this by speaking with the London-based company and learning they were starting up US operations. Mathews volunteered to help be a part of the early stages. It was only a couple of weeks later when they invited him to join their operation in Houston, Texas.

In 2001, he began his long stint at Honeywell, deploying and managing major ERP systems for various businesses and rising through the IT ranks. “I never planned to spend such a large part of my career

“One of my goals was to see the world and that’s something that my career has definitely helped me do.”

BRUCE MATHEWS

there, but it was very fertile ground for someone to learn the business and grow,” Mathews recounts.

This gave him the knowledge and skills to be a driving force for change and success leveraging technology.

In late 2017, Honeywell decided to spin off its Homes Product Portfolio and ADI Distribution businesses to create a new publicly traded company called Resideo, in addition to spinning off its transportation division called Garrett Motion. By that time, Mathews had been at Honeywell for nearly two decades and had developed extensive experience managing large-scale global technology change and optimization initiatives and driving new digital business capabilities.

Mathews was asked to lead the formation of both spins from an IT standpoint, and energetically took on this role.

“The challenge with spin-offs, especially with large diverse conglomerates like Honeywell, is for years and years, they do everything to drive synergies and leverage by establishing a common shared business and technology architecture,” he notes. “From an IT standpoint, the separation required in a spin is typically under

a tight timeline and definitely affects the whole organization.”

In the year leading up to the spin, Mathews and his team partnered closely with the business to get to an arm’s length financial and operational state for Resideo and Garrett. That included cloning and implementing new systems, reconfiguring systems to align with the new legal entity structure, separating data and infrastructure, and building new IT and cyber organizations.

During the spins, Mathews was offered the role of CIO of Resideo to transform the company’s entire IT landscape. “When we spun as Resideo on October 29, 2018, we still had a lot of hard work ahead,” Mathews explains. “Everything across the business information technology portfolio—from the computers to the major ERP systems to the systems at our manufacturing and distribution centers had to be touched. It took us two years to do that, and COVID hit at the same time.”

At the time, he was going from a $40 billion company to a $4.5 billion company, and there was a lot of rethinking that needed to happen. Mathews built out the organization’s infrastructure, which comprises

a changing world.™

When your employees grow, your business grows.

275 sites, and all the major applications, and now oversees a budget of more than $80 million today.

“You have to make different choices to simplify and build something that is more fit for purpose,” he explains. “It demands start-up thinking and action but also requires the untangling, rearchitecture and decommission of significant process and technical debt. And all this while ensuring the business continues to run.”

The pandemic added another layer of complexity because he wasn’t sure things would scale seamlessly and work appropriately when people all began working from home. “We needed to get the whole business engaged and make sure the process leaders understood how things were going to change,” Mathews adds.

Overall, Mathews feels proud of what he and his team have accomplished at Resideo. With a new executive leadership team and a major focus on transformation and growth, Mathews and his team have been extremely active driving higher-order impactful change across the entire value chain.

“Bruce has been a superlatively collaborative partner with whom we have had the privilege of working since his Honeywell days,” says Patrick VanLandingham, client executive at NTT DATA. “He provided exceptional leadership during the spin out that formed Resideo and remains a strong leader and partner in our long-standing relationship.”

Major initiatives such as Credit and Collections and Accounts Payable transformation are helping to improve liquidity, while a renewed focus on integrated datadriven decisions across planning, profitability analytics, and operations management is helping to drive growth, margins, and better customer outcomes.

Another major investment has been in its touchless order and digital commerce infrastructure. Mathews and his team have enabled significant e-commerce growth by integrating front- and back-office systems to ensure they are scalable with appropriate technologies.

“Bruce is a forward-thinking, datadriven leader who focuses on the results

and potential ROI of a project,” says Michael Pistone, enterprise account manager at Palo Alto Networks. “It’s been a pleasure to work with him and the Resideo team on transforming and modernizing their networks.”

Efficiency continues to be a key. His team is utilizing robotic process automation to connect and streamline processes, which frees up time to work on more value-added activities.

“We continue to architect and build for the future,” he says. “We are investing in contemporary cloud and SaaS technologies that will allow our business to scale seamlessly and securely in a cost-effective manner with speed.”

Mathews has enjoyed valuable life lessons from his time at Honeywell and Resideo. “It’s important to me to never forget where you came from,” he shares. “But as you progress, also don’t let your past define and limit you. Incredible things can be achieved with the right collaboration and an open mind . . . and of course with a very strong work and integrity ethic.”

“It’s important to me to never forget where you came from. But as you progress, also don’t let your past define and limit you.”

BRUCE MATHEWS

The Value of Empathy

Sara Fatima goes the extra mile as head of global talent acquisition at Verifone

By NOAH JOHNSON

For Sara Fatima, head of global talent acquisition at Verifone, empathy is the secret ingredient for hiring the right job candidate.

Fatima was part of an effort to bring in a new talent acquisition (TA) function in-house at Verifone, a leading technology provider of electronic payment transactions. Within her first two years at the company, she helped build a global acquisition team of over twenty-one people from the ground up.

She partnered with the internal HR Ops team and ATS partners to implement a new

Sara Fatima Head of Global Talent Acquisition Verifone

applicant tracking system in fifty-seven days, a process that normally takes five to six months. Since then, the organization has also continued to hire almost a thousand employees—even through the pandemic, her team has continued to outperform itself.

She credits her relatively quick success at Verifone to understating the importance of “not hiring for the job, but for the company.”

“Take the time to understand your organization,” advises Fatima, whose team is responsible for engaging with those interested in joining Verifone. “Understand the business and their pain. The only way you will be able to hire the right person is if you understand the people who you’re talking to. Walk in their shoes.

“When you develop that level of empathy on both sides of the house,” she adds, “only then will you find a person that is the right fit for the organization. You shouldn’t ever hire candidates for a job. Hire them for a career.”

Fatima learned these valuable lessons over several roles throughout her professional career. As a corporate recruiter at AutoTrader, now known as Cox Automotive, she managed nationwide recruitment for the company’s subsidiaries at all levels of the organization. She was also tasked with integrating three companies into

AutoTrader in the same year, a project that required an understanding of how those businesses ran in order to assimilate them into the company.

“Understand what your value proposition is, whether you’re a company or a candidate,” she says. “Understand the technology and its impact, understand how the company leverages its people and technology, spend thirty minutes with the managers. Have them walk you through their life.”

After two years at AutoTrader, Fatima had an eight-year career at IBM as a recruiting program manager as well as technical talent program manager. She was responsible for identifying and securing the best available talent for the business, building talent pipelines, and delivering a positive candidate experience throughout the recruiting process. Part of that work included curating experiences and programs that catered to early professionals like university graduates and interns it was trying to hire.

Her last big IBM project included taking seven hundred engineering interns to Disney World for three days after a ten-week internship. After the immersive experience, almost every intern received an employment offer.

“Take the time to understand your organization. . . .

The only way you will be able to hire the right person is if you understand the people who you’re talking to.”

SARA FATIMA

Courtesy of Sara Fatima

She attributes the 95 percent acceptance rate for that program to IBM’s work in imparting its culture to the interns before they even started working for the company. She also attributes it to her team’s ability to relentlessly reinvent the ways it went about courting talent and creating signature experiences.

“That passion of saying ‘nothing is ever perfect; we can always make it better’ is what differentiates you from anybody else,” she says.

That passion fueled Fatima when she moved into her current role at Verifone. Nothing was off limits when it came to what could be changed to improve the company’s recruiting processes, she remembers. Fatima and her team looked at how long processes developed by the company’s recruitment outsourcing company took. The monstrously inefficient recruitment process and model was simply not fit to scale globally. Simple, effective, and quick improvements were made to save recruiters more time and reduce process steps.

While there’s been many positive changes to recruitment processes, Fatima and her team have also brought in a culture change to TA. When she first started in her position, she says that “no one said hi. It

wasn’t personal, but it was more around how little value they saw in Talent Acquisition because the RPO had no interest in the business. They were just trying to fill requisitions and make money off of it.”

The culture change came when she started engaging more with managers and instructed her recruiters to take the same approach. As more time was invested into forging those relationships, the TA team shared its discoveries with each other, which Fatima says allowed the group to partner with its business constituencies, implement best practices, and build back its credibility.

“TA now has a seat at leadership meetings where we talk about workforce planning and talent acquisition on a biweekly basis and our feedback is valued and worked on,” she says.

Fatima’s passion for TA inspired her to write internally about what it means at Verifone. She says she wanted her talent acquisition team to take away the importance of being authentic in whatever it does.

“If someone can truly and authentically define their value proposition and their purpose, that’s when they become instrumental in success, whatever they may mean for them,” Fatima says.

“If someone can truly and authentically define their value proposition and their purpose, that’s when they become instrumental in success, whatever that may mean for them.”

SARA FATIMA

Sara Fatima

Head of Global Talent Acquisition

Verifone

Sara's acumen in diverse hiring and her intentionality in fostering an environment of inclusivity is what makes the VDart Digital partnership with Verifone so special.

Betting on Himself

After big-city firms, John Rudy challenged himself to go in-house and help drive strategy. The gamble paid off, and he’s helping Wynn Resorts grow in the postpandemic environment.

By ZACH BALIVA

Every day at the Wynn Las Vegas, someone goes all in. The player holds what seems to be an unbeatable hand, but when they push the chips to the center of the table, they’re not only betting on their hand—they’re betting on themselves. John Rudy, vice president of legal and corporate and assistant secretary at Wynn Resorts, understands the impulse.

Rudy, who joined Wynn Resorts in 2019, is a senior lawyer at the iconic gaming and hospitality company with over twentyfive thousand employees and more than $13 billion in assets. His career has taken

John Rudy VP of Legal, Corporate & Assistant Secretary Wynn Resorts Limited

him to two large, preeminent international brands in their respective industries. To get there, he’s had to bet on himself time and time again.

He was born and raised in New York, earning his bachelor’s from Emory University and a JD from the University at Buffalo School of Law. He started his career as an associate at the law firm of Cahill Gordon and Reindel in Manhattan, where he represented large financial institutions on corporate finance and securities issues. When another firm, Skadden, Arps, was looking for an associate in its London office, Rudy took his first professional risk and left for the chance to broaden his practice and

work for multinational clients on complex, cross-border transactions.

The bold move paid off. Soon, Rudy was gaining exposure to global markets working for clients with holdings in Russia, Western Europe, and the Middle East. Although the young lawyer was thriving, the financial collapse of 2009 slowed his momentum as global markets slowed down and opportunities diminished. When Rudy’s wife got a job in Virginia, the couple returned to the United States, and he eventually returned to Cahill in New York.

Nearly ten years into a private practice career, Rudy had well-rounded experience but wanted something more. He faced a

“Corporate lawyers need to have a 360-degree view of the business to grow in their career.”

JOHN RUDY

Courtesy of John Rudy

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crossroads—should he stay on the partner track or go in-house?

A desire to drive strategy and collaborate on a team led him to explore in-house positions, and soon, Rudy had a suitor in John Deere.

To take the job and unlock new opportunities by working for a Fortune 100 company, the city boy from the east coast would have to move to rural Illinois. Rudy said goodbye to his extended family and moved his young child and pregnant wife one thousand miles from everything they had previously known.

Thankfully, the family adapted to life in the corn belt, and over a seven-year tenure, Rudy gained expertise in corporate governance. During this important era, he managed SEC reports and interacted with the company’s investor relations team. He was also instrumental in implementing the process to create an annual Conflict Minerals Report pursuant to the federal Dodd Frank Act enacted in 2010.

Along the way, Rudy decided it was time to pursue an advanced degree. “Corporate lawyers need to have a 360-degree view of the business to grow in their career,” he says.

That conviction led him to pursue an MBA and grow his capabilities in financial reporting. Rudy finished the program with the desire to get deeper into strategic business and strategy conversations, but when he returned to the office, he realized his aspirations had outgrown his role. It was time for a change.

At the same time, Wynn Resorts was transitioning to a new leadership team, including the general counsel.

Rudy interviewed with the general counsel and CFO, and when he discovered

the company wanted deeper capabilities in finance, M&A, and corporate governance, he knew it was a great fit. There was just one problem—Rudy would have to go all-in one more time. He had to trust in his ability to not only apply his expertise to a new industry, but also convince his family to leave Illinois for Nevada.

Six months into his tenure, the COVID-19 pandemic shut all Wynn locations, including those in China and a new casino just north of Boston. During this period, Rudy helped the company complete three bond deals, shore up its balance sheet, and weather the storm. Legal also helped launch COVID testing and other protocols.

The pandemic also accelerated the gaming industry’s entry into online gaming. In 2020, Wynn invested more than $100 million to take a controlling interest in an interactive gaming company and launch its US product. Rudy’s team completed the legal work to rebrand and launch the endeavor in multiple US states and later sold it to an investor.

The spin-off will give Wynn Resorts the bandwidth to focus on sports betting. The company is finalizing a deal to create a substantial sports betting business that will deliver significant value to shareholders for years to come.

With these deals in place, Wynn is ready for a rebound as Vegas reopens and tourism returns to Nevada. Rudy says it’s impossible to know where the industry will go next, but he’s doubling down on his hand.

“I believe that you play to a standard and let your work product speak for itself,” he says. “I’ll bet on myself and let the chips fall where they may.”

“I believe that you play to a standard and let your work product speak for itself. I’ll bet on myself and let the chips fall where they may.”

JOHN RUDY

Building on Core Values

Rebecca Guenther manages Beztak Properties’ building plans with strong leadership

By BILLY YOST

Rebecca Guenther is both completely attentive and a blur of positive energy all in one conversation. The senior vice president at Beztak Properties is intent on fulfilling her organization’s goal of reaching fifty thousand units under management in the next thirty-six months.

Over the course of the last sixty days of 2021 alone, Guenther has brought three thousand new units to the organization that she says will hopefully help answer the demand that was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our clients saw our fluid and proactive approach to meet evolving service preferences during the pandemic,” Guenther says. “It made us

successful despite a challenging time and caught the attention of conventional and institutional owners nationwide.”

Beztak, a vertically integrated real estate firm, serves as a leading provider of development, construction, investment, and property management services. While the pandemic certainly altered the outlook for Beztak’s third-party management expansion, albeit temporarily, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“The adoption of remote work has changed the supply and demand balance in some markets across the nation and many clients are seeking deals where renters are choosing to lay roots,” Beztak explains. “Fortunately, we’ve had a long-standing practice to utilize the best technologies and

sure that they can speak to me,” Guenther says. “I think that type of accessibility and transparency instills confidence with our clients. Even if it means delivering tough news, I know that when I’m honest and open as well as working to provide solutions, our clients appreciate it.”

She adds that her own leadership is deeply connected to the core values that Beztak works to instill in all its people: excellent, ethical, and effective operations.

DEVELOPMENT WHEREVER IT MAY LEAD Beztak’s fully integrated operations isn’t just a benefit to its clients. Guenther says it allows for employees to grow and develop into new and expanding areas. This journey begins with Beztak’s Manager-In-Training program.

“New employees coming into the program may not be familiar with real estate or multifamily properties, but what I think is valuable about the program is that it provides on-the-job training where they learn each facet of the business over a six-month time frame,” Guenther explains. “They get exposure to so many parts of the business and leave excited about taking on a property management role. We’ve also had people emerge with more interest in accounting or marketing.”

She adds that the program has allowed Beztak to develop a strong bench of resources as the company continues to grow. And as those leaders accumulate more experience, they may choose to enter Beztak’s executive level leadership program.

Recently, Beztak rolled out its quarterly President’s Club training, a daylong event where Beztak’s top associates in a variety of settings come together by invitation to dig into high-level challenges that they might face in their next roles.

“One of the exercises we conducted was role-playing where they had to work through a multifaceted challenge, including presentation of the problem and proposed solution with ownership,” Guenther explains. “We take the time to pick apart each scenario, and the feedback we’ve gotten on the training has been so positive.”

“We’ve had a long-standing practice to utilize the best technologies and innovation, meaning that we’re equipped to operate adeptly in any market or location.”

Rebecca Guenther SVP Beztak Properties

She says that especially at present, the hunt for talent is extremely challenging, and it only makes sense to continue investing internally in associates who want to grow and develop toward the next level in their careers.

FINDING YES PEOPLE

When it comes both to identifying internal talent and bringing in new hires, Guenther recalls a conversation she had with two of her VPs after a recent interview. “We all agreed that [the candidate] was a ‘yes person,’” the SVP remembers.

It dates back to advice that current Beztak COO Elizabeth McCririe gave Guenther much earlier in both of their careers at a former employer. “She told me that no matter what was asked of me, to say

yes,” Guenther explains. “Even if you have to step out of your comfort zone or you end up disliking it, say yes because you’re going to gain experience that will be valuable.”

Guenther says it’s the attitude she looks for in her team, in hiring, and more generally, in the kinds of people she surrounds herself with.

And while the SVP’s role doesn’t allow her to walk the units of Beztak’s nationwide business as much as the old days, she says it’s still something she looks forward to. It gives Guenther a chance to walk side-by-side both with clients and internal colleagues she’s helping develop.

Over the next sixty days, it’s doubtful she’ll walk all three thousand new units, but you get the feeling she’d like to.

“Even if you have to step out of your comfort zone or you end up disliking it, say yes because you’re going to gain experience that will be valuable.”

REBECCA GUENTHER

The Customer Drives Innovation

Scott Morgan drives growth and transformation with a customer-first mindset at San Franciscobased Splunk

By KEITH LORIA

Scott Morgan has a passion for policy. At one point, he planned on serving in Congress. But after interning at the White House, he realized that Washington is as much about politics as policy. He then focused his career on technology, after seeing its true impact.

“The power of technology, where industry was going, and how technology could help shape the future—including the outcome of decisions that people make, which often touches on policy—became very clear to me,” Morgan recalls. “That intersection of technology and policy, paired with the ability to have impact, was really what drove me to continue my work in the technology

industry. If you start in the Bay Area as a lawyer, inevitably you’re going to be working on technology matters.”

His career path has led him to Splunk, a San Francisco-based company that specializes in data platform software designed to search, monitor, and analyze data. It counts more than ninety companies in the Fortune 100 as customers. Morgan serves as its senior vice president, chief legal officer for global affairs, and secretary. He was drawn to Splunk for a variety of reasons.

“The market opportunity was massive,” he says. “We did not simply improve on an existing idea but created something entirely new. This was a contrarian view because at the time, machine-generated data was considered data exhaust. And the only time it

“It is really our customers who guide what we do and who we are. . . . They defined the market for us, and from there we really started to grow.”

SCOTT MORGAN

Scott Morgan

SVP, Chief Legal Officer for Global Affairs, and Secretary Splunk Inc.

was really used and looked at was if something went wrong.”

And the Splunk leaders were innovators and disruptors. “We started to apply it against a market opportunity,” he says. “It is really our customers who guide what we do and who we are.”

He further explains that customers who utilized Splunk’s software in their systems and digital infrastructure noticed things they wouldn’t have noticed before. “They were the ones who told us where we should go and what we should do with the product,” Morgan says. “They defined the market for us, and from there we really started to grow.”

When Morgan started with Splunk close to ten years ago, it had four hundred employees and about $120 million in revenue. Today, the company has more than seven thousand employees and in August 2021 announced guidance to hit about $3.1 billion in annual recurring revenue by year’s end.

Part of Morgan’s role includes overseeing global affairs, which consists of two sides: government affairs and global impact. “Our government affairs work has three pillars,” Morgan explains. “One is field success, two is thought leadership, and three is policy— policy understanding and policy advocacy.”

With the global impact group—known as Splunk for Good—the company focuses on bridging the data divide to find actionable solutions for humanity’s greatest challenges. Morgan’s leadership involves thinking about those objectives and those groups and teams in collaboration with legal considerations.

“We did not simply improve on an existing idea but created something entirely new.”

SCOTT MORGAN

Eric Millette

“We are serving the company,” he says. “We get to see across the organization, both at the high level and in the trenches. We can act as the connective tissue across many, many different groups and activities, and bring these competencies, skills, and the sub-sub areas to all the things that we do.”

Especially important in terms of global impact is the company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work.

“ESG is obviously something that our stakeholders are critically interested in. How are we running the company—not just our financial results but also our impact on our communities and impact on the climate?” he explains. “We do that by changing some of our operations as well as how we are disclosing it to our stakeholders.”

That includes publishing an ESG update on the company website and committing to publishing more detailed updates more frequently, including more detailed climate components.

“With government affairs—and this is true for Splunk for Good as well—all of our attorneys and legal professionals have the ability to look around corners,” Morgan observes, adding that his team can look at indicators such as the government’s procurement policies or geopolitical events that are happening around the world.

“Those are all indicators of potential change,” Morgan continues. “As we look at those, we can bring those back to the

business so that we’re counseling strategically ahead of those changes, so that we’re prepared for those changes, and so that we have alternatives.”

As an innovative company, Splunk must also navigate constant changes in the technology sector. The changing nature of the industry influences how Morgan and his team navigate how they understand the shifts and ever-changing needs of their customers.

Ultimately Splunk’s mission is to serve its customers.

“A successful company and service organization doesn’t insist that somebody come to where we want them to be—we go to where they are and then we bring them to where we and they believe that they need to go,” Morgan notes. “We try to do that with empathy, with patience, with transparency, and with integrity. And we try to do it shoulder to shoulder with our colleagues, so we’re in the trenches with them.”

And if you’re in the trenches, you want people like Scott Morgan and his team with you.

“A successful company and service organization doesn’t insist that somebody come to where we want them to be . . . we bring them to where we and they believe that they need to go.”

SCOTT MORGAN

Scott, we are grateful for your leadership as an innovator and in our communities. We are honored to collaborate with you and your team.

Team Orrick

Orrick congratulates Scott Morgan. We are proud to represent Splunk and to work with Scott and his legal team. Orrick is an AmLaw 100 Law Firm and Fortune Best Place to Work. We focus on serving the tech, E&I, and finance sectors globally. Learn more at orrick.com.

The Future of Medicine

A look at Omnicell’s bold vision for an autonomous pharmacy and its quest to lower costs, reduce errors, and improve patient outcomes

By ZACHARY BROWN

Founded in 2000, the DeWinter Group has established itself as the Bay Area’s premier provider of Accounting & Finance professionals on an executive search, consulting, and contract basis. The DeWinter Group is the parent company of Maris Consulting Group which services full-time & contract positions within both IT & Engineering verticals. The relationships we’ve built over the years are the foundation of our success. You can count on our team for your Professional Sta ng Search needs and trust we will strive every day to live up to our motto — We Build Our Network One Relationship at a Time.

From blossoming tech start-ups to Fortune 500 giants, we have partnered with hundreds of private and publicly traded companies, venture capital firms and private equity firms to support them in their search for the ‘right hire.’

At the DeWinter Group, we provide search services for accounting, finance and technology professionals at every level within the CEO, CFO, CTO and CIO's organization.

Randall Lipps was thriving as an assistant vice president of sales and operations for an important American Airlines division when his life was suddenly thrown into disorder. His newborn daughter, Sarah Ann, was fighting for her life in the trauma unit of a local hospital. Doctors struggled to find a diagnosis until they finally discovered she had a disease that impaired her breathing.

As Lipps watched clinicians come in and out of Sarah Ann’s room, the experienced operations manager grew frustrated with the inefficient way staff managed and used medical supplies. He knew there was a way to remove redundancy and streamline operations to improve patient care. Sarah Ann soon recovered, and the next year, Lipps started Omnicell Technologies to automate the way hospitals and other healthcare providers order, store, track, and administer medication.

Thirty years later, Lipps is president and CEO of what has become a publicly traded company with nearly $900 million in revenue. Omnicell has grown through a series of acquisitions and now uses a cloud platform to power automated, intelligence, and techladen robotic pharmacy delivery services in more than seven thousand care facilities around the globe. Its system harnesses data and analytics to reduce medication errors and increase operational efficiency. Omnicell helps its users maintain compliance, grow efficiencies, improve safety, and increase revenue.

In 2021, Omnicell announced several key partnerships that demonstrate industrywide adoption of its autonomous pharmacy. The Christ Hospital Health Network in Ohio expanded its use of Omnicell products and implemented a central pharmacy dispensing service to replace time-consuming manual steps and automate key workflows.

“Through the Central Pharmacy Dispensing Service, we are able to optimize and maximize the benefit of automation technology, allowing our staff to shift focus

from logistical tasks to play a more active role in patient care initiatives,” said Justin M. Gamble, PharmD, network director of pharmacy at the Christ Hospital Health Network in a press release.

Today, nearly half of the top three-hundred health systems in the country are partnering with Omnicell. “Omnicell is delivering the technology and services to address the gaps and challenges across an increasingly complex and critical pharmacy supply chain,” Scott Seidelmann, Omnicell’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in a press release.

Omnicell’s recent $177 million acquisition of FDS Amplicare is growing its portfolio of tools and solutions. The move is aimed at a division called EnlivenHealth, which is Omnicell’s patient engagement and communications platform that pharmacies and health plans use to customize the patient experience. By absorbing FDS Amplicare, EnlivenHealth can bring new financial management and population health components to improve payment collection and other steps.

“We are thrilled to be joining together two innovative technology leaders whose shared mission is to transform both the practice and business of retail pharmacy,” Lipps said in a press release.

Another strategic move is setting Omnicell up for continued success. The company recently opened a new facility in Bangalore, India, to help employees deliver new innovations and strengthen its services. With a quarter-century of expertise in developing AI platforms and mobile applications, Ved Singh will lead the foreign hub as vice president of software engineering.

It’s an important step as industry experts expect healthcare cloud computing to continue its upward trajectory based on advancements in machine learning and a growing investment in IT across the industry.

In a challenging time, health systems and other providers are doing all they can to reduce costs and improve care, and Omnicell is marching on to errorless medication management and a fully autonomous pharmacy.

SAN FRANCISCO | SILICON VALLEY | OAKLAND

COMPANY

A look behind the scenes of company-wide initiatives and goals, acquisitions, and brand development

Learning Reimagined

After completing an important digital transformation, CFO Thomas Donohue has readied Barnes & Noble Education to help digitally native students thrive

By ZACH BALIVA

The decreasing popularity of print textbooks, the rise of digital devices, the price of higher education, and changing consumer behaviors created a difficult landscape for Barnes & Noble Education (BNED) to navigate in 2020. For a company set up to serve the college bookstore industry, it was a perfect storm. Then, in March, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and closed bookstores and college campuses across the nation.

Executive Vice President and CFO Thomas Donohue is helping the storied company pivot to take advantage of the new opportunities created by the unexpected events. “Higher education is changing, and institutions are looking for solutions,” he

says. “This is our moment to show what a great partner we can be.”

BNED got its start when Leonard Riggio opened the Student Book Exchange in 1965 and has been expanding through organic growth and acquisitions ever since. Riggio acquired the Barnes & Noble name, opened dozens of on-campus stores under Barnes & Noble College, and eventually watched that company go public on the New York Stock Exchange under Barnes & Noble Education.

In the past decade, the company has worked overtime to keep up with emerging digital trends. Donohue joined BNED in 2015. He studied math and finance and worked as an analyst before becoming assistant treasurer at Interpublic Group. Managing people at the international advertising company prepared him for his current role.

During his tenure, Donohue has helped his company acquire writing skills and services websites like Student Brands and PaperRater.com. In 2017, they introduced bartleby, an online study tools subscription service loaded with expert homework help and other features designed to serve students and help the company keep pace in a competitive field. It was the first time BNED developed a business-to-consumer product, and finance was involved every step of the way to ensure the business was structured properly.

“We find that active governance is a key to value-creation in transformations, given the deep complexity of these initiatives,” says Scott Rankin, national advisory leader for consumer and retail at KPMG. Rankin leads the performance transformation platform, KPMG Elevate, and supported BNED in the project.

For BNED, bartleby is one step in an allor-nothing digital transformation. Upon its launch, the new service attracted fifty thousand subscribers. Company leaders were optimistic and looked to build on that momentum. Then, COVID hit, threatening to derail the progress.

The pandemic had a big impact on higher education and all affiliated businesses as colleges and universities closed their doors— including those of BNED’s campus stores. As managing and reducing expenses became critical, Donohue and his colleagues made the difficult decision to furlough and lay off some employees.

While some business leaders would see COVID as a death blow, those at BNED resolved to leverage what they had been building, accelerate the digital transformation, and turn remote learning into an opportunity. The company was strategic during the pandemic and used the time to strengthen its base of both

clients and subscribers while listening to what each stakeholder would need in a post-pandemic world.

“Our research has shown the companies that continue to invest in new ways to grow, while controlling costs, ultimately perform better than their peers and are ready for changes in the marketplace,” Rankin notes.

As CIO Stephen Culver explained to Silicon Republic, BNED was well-prepared because it had just made key enhancements to bartleby. The upgrades, Culver said, “provide students with a digital learning tool that gives them 24/7 access to step-bystep textbook solutions and a searchable Q&A library, as well as a writing center that helps build better habits by assisting with spelling and grammar, plagiarism detection and citation assistance.”

Long before COVID-19, BNED was investing in digital learning and technologies. “We were prepared when schools transitioned to online learning, and we don’t see that going away,” Donohue explains. As the pandemic increased demand for online learning support, BNED introduced the bartleby digital study bundle, which students can use to access homework help, writing services, and other resources. Traffic, engagement, and subscriber numbers are all increasing as BNED gains market share and demonstrates the value it provides to digital native learners.

Despite the disruption COVID-19 brought to campuses nationwide, BNED continued to implement the strategic initiatives required to move its digital transformation forward. The company grew its digital student solutions business, expanded a course material delivery program known as BNC First Day, invested in search engine optimization and partnerships, attracted new K-12 and institutional clients, and released a new e-commerce platform.

“Higher education is changing, and institutions are looking for solutions. This is our moment to show what a great partner we can be.”

THOMAS DONOHUE

KPMG’s Elevate Helps Barnes & Noble Education with Digital Transformation

KPMG helps the world’s leading organizations transform their businesses to compete in a fastchanging marketplace. Our Elevate offering combines deep industry expertise with market leading data and analytics to accelerate profit growth and value creation. We are proud to have worked with Thomas Donahue and the team at Barnes & Noble Education to support their business and digital transformation. Today, markets are in a constant evolution of disruption and firms must adapt to ever changing landscapes. KPMG helps companies capitalize on opportunities to drive performance from strategy through execution.

Learn more at:

https://advisory.kpmg.us/services/kpmg-elevate.html kpmg.com

Donohue’s leadership with the transformation is noted by external partners he works with, such as Wells Fargo. “Tom is a visionary leader renowned for his deep focus on developing long-term relationships,” say Wells Fargo Corporate & Investment Banking’s Eric Frandson and Wells Fargo Capital Finance’s Lauren Murphy. “Wells Fargo is pleased to work with Tom in supporting BNED’s pivot to digital.”

In reporting second quarter results for FY21, the company said it had gained more than 120,000 bartleby subscribers year to date. The growth was one bright spot that helped the company through what Donohue calls a “once in a lifetime disruption that has taken its toll on everyone and every business.”

Once, the CFO job was all about numbers, but Donohue has watched it expand throughout his career. “Today’s CFO has to make sure the company is transforming, and the business strategy is moving in the right direction,” he says. “And you need the right talent to align with your business priorities and strategy.” A great team has helped Donohue take BNED’s finance function from accounting-only to a problem-solving partner.

By the fall of 2021, university campuses and most college bookstores were reopening, signaling new life for Barnes & Noble Education. The textbook wholesale and services provider now has nearly eight hundred physical stores, state-of-the-art e-commerce websites, robust educational partnerships, and hundreds of thousands of loyal subscribers.

After completing an important digital transformation and weathering a major public health crisis, the company appears to be ready to meet students on campus, at home, or anywhere in between.

THOMAS DONOHUE

FULFILLED IN FINANCE

After nearly three decades in finance, Thomas Donohue still loves coming to work each-and-every day. That’s because he’s found a way to develop relationships and leverage his skills to make an impact.

He encourages those just starting out in finance to get immersed in a company and learn as much as possible. Finance degrees and MBAs are important, but real, hands-on training comes when you dig deep and open yourself to new opportunities.

“Never be afraid to say yes to something new,” he says. “And if you get asked to do something or to work on a project, say yes!”

“We were prepared when schools transitioned to online learning, and we don’t see that going away.”

Learning starts with curiosity, is fed by discoveries, and continues for a lifetime. Education lays the foundation for the future.

Wells Fargo salutes Tom Donohue and Barnes & Noble Education, and is committed to supporting education in our community.

Corporate and Investment Banking Eric

Frandson

Commercial Capital Lauren

Murphy

Leading by Example

Fidelity National Financial’s strong leadership has kept Stephanie Wells at the company for more than twenty years. She’s continuing that tradition by making her staff feel valued.

By NOAH JOHNSON

Wells

Stephanie Wells is the first to admit that she doesn’t like change. But the reasons she has for spending the past twenty years with Fidelity National Financial Inc., a provider of title insurance and settlement services to the real estate and mortgage industries, go far beyond a desire to avoid change.

Wells is now senior vice president and tax director, responsible for overseeing the company’s corporate tax department, and says that solid leadership and constant growth has played a huge role in her long tenure with the company.

“We are always looking for ways to grow and increase value for shareholders,” she says. “That just means we keep acquiring companies and doing complex transactions. It’s never boring. There’s always something new and opportunities to learn.”

She joined the company in 2000, coming from a tax manager role at CKE Restaurants. She got an opportunity to move to Fidelity when the company was moving its headquarters from Orange County, California, to Santa Barbara, where she lived with her husband. Because CKE was a Fidelity investment, Fidelity management asked her and her team if they wanted to move to the headquarters as well. It was an offer she couldn’t pass up.

“I could see that Fidelity was growing: they built this new office building in Santa Barbara, they were adding to their corporate headquarters,” she says. “They went and bought another big group of companies that were title insurance related, so I could see Fidelity had a really good future. It was kind of a no-brainer.”

Though her first role at Fidelity as a tax manager entailed similar responsibilities to her previous position, Wells had a lot to learn about the business side of things, particularly the procedure related to accounting for Fidelity’s insurance companies. The financial accounting that has to be done for an insurance company is different

Stephanie

SVP and Tax Director Fidelity National Financial Inc.

“We’re blessed to be working in this company. It’s secure and a really great company, but knowing you can help the community helps everyone better themselves.”

STEPHANIE WELLS

David Claros

from other kinds of companies, she says. Learning about that was challenging, but fortunately, she had a lot of support.

“The people who had been in the positions prior left a really good path and good files we could follow,” she says. “We had some great consultants that helped us learn and understand the business. We had to work really hard, but it was a pretty smooth transition because of the path that was provided from the past and the guidance we received.”

Over the next eighteen years, Wells earned a series of promotions into leadership roles; the most recent was in 2019, to her current role as tax director. Those promotions were a result of her bosses feeling confident in her dependability and her commitment to the company, she says. She now oversees a team of twenty-five and, among other duties, reviews their work on federal and state income tax returns.

As a leader, she’s learned the importance of supporting her staff, just as her bosses have supported her. While she isn’t “a loud leader,” she says, she knows how to bring the best out of her staff by empowering each person to grow.

“I like to lead by example and be a good listener to help my team best utilize their strengths,” she says. “I recognize everyone has something different to bring to the group, so I let them try to be their best by listening to their ideas and keeping that level of positivity that everyone can bring something to the table, whether you’ve just started or been here thirty years.”

One of the biggest challenges Wells faces is adapting to changes in tax law that have occurred at the federal level in the past few years. Fidelity operates in all fifty states, many of which have different rules related to taxes. Wells uses various techniques to stay on top of the varied and ever-changing laws. “We keep up with research software that gives us emails every time tax law changes, and we also have a lot of accounting firms that do webinars and seminars to teach us about anything that’s changing,” she says.

Last year was a busy year for her and her team: they’ve completed over eight hundred tax returns in 2021, a big increase from the five hundred they usually complete annually. It’s an accomplishment she’s proud of, especially since her department completed the returns in less than three months with most staff working partly remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Wells and her staff aren’t working to meet their deadlines, they’re working on service projects. They’ve packed food for children in need, held a food drive for a local food bank, and purchased Christmas gifts for a local senior. Wells wanted to take on these kinds of projects with her team when she became tax director because she thought it would promote camaraderie. The projects also help people to “grow in their gratitude for what they have,” she says.

“We’re blessed to be working in this company,” she says. “It’s secure and a really great company, but knowing you can help the community helps everyone better themselves.”

“I like to lead by example and be a good listener to help my team best utilize their strengths.”

STEPHANIE WELLS

Let’s Make a Deal

As legal counsel at AEG, Kate Sheets creates partnerships that power the biggest games, festivals, and concerts in the world

By ZACH BALIVA

Kate Sheets was working late on a Thursday. That wasn’t unusual for the second-year associate, but an email that popped into her inbox was. A senior partner sent her a note: some VIPs were coming into the office to close a deal, and Sheets was to make herself available. The young lawyer rushed into her firm’s conference room, cleared the massive table, and prepped a makeshift war room.

An entourage arrived shrouded in secrecy, and Sheets soon recognized them as the team behind Guggenheim Baseball Management. They were there to purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Assisting on the high-profile deal was a dream come true for Sheets, a Chicago native and avid Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox fan who grew up playing sports and watching Michael Jordan–era championship celebrations in Grant Park. Sheets went to the UCLA School of Law, and although she considered combining her legal skills and interest in athletics, she didn’t quite know how—until the biggest deal in the history of sports was happening right in front of her.

Entrepreneur Frank McCourt had previously purchased the Dodgers franchise for $420 million. After a divorce and other personal and professional events impacted

Kate Sheets VP and Legal Counsel

the front office and introduced uncertainty, Major League Baseball assumed control of the Dodgers’ operations and installed a trustee as the team entered bankruptcy.

Ownership disputes spawned court proceedings and, finally, McCourt agreed to sell. The Guggenheim group, led by Magic Johnson, emerged as the front-runners. The stage was set for a tense and complex negotiation.

Sheets and her colleagues worked around the clock for five days, pausing only for short naps on lobby couches. Faced with a tight deadline, she tracked hundreds of files, prepped documents for signatories, and looked after every minute detail. When all was said and done, Guggenheim Baseball Management bought the Dodgers for $2.3 billion in 2012, eclipsing the $845 million the Ricketts family had paid for the Chicago Cubs three years earlier.

The deal did more than shatter records: it opened Sheets’s eyes to new possibilities. “Sports was my life growing up, and I realized I could marry my passion with my profession,” she says. She continued developing her skills with an eye on her favorite industry and, in 2016, she seized the opportunity to join AEG, the global leader in sports and live entertainment, as legal counsel.

A massive international company, AEG owns top franchises like the Los Angeles Kings and LA Galaxy, produces major events like the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and operates preeminent venues like Crypto.com Arena and the O2 in London. Sheets works primarily with AEG Global Partnerships, a group that negotiates

sponsored partnerships and naming rights deals for the company’s portfolio of brands and venues.

Deals within AEG Global Partnerships frequently touch multiple properties across several genres. “Sports, music, and entertainment bring people together like nothing else, and the combination of these worlds on our platforms creates unique opportunities for our clients,” Sheets explains.

American Express is one such client. The brand has a multiyear deal with AEG, making it the “official card” of numerous teams, stadiums, festivals, and events around the world. AmEx cardholders enjoy presale opportunities as well as other perks and amenities.

Another AEG partner, UCLA Health, became the “official partner” of several marquee AEG-owned and -operated venues and events across the Los Angeles area as well as a founding partner and the first “official medical partner” of Crypto.com Arena.

Perhaps Sheets’s biggest deal at AEG was a recent one, which turned the former Staples Center into the new Crypto.com Arena. In late 2019, AEG reacquired the naming rights for the iconic Southern California sports venue, assuming they would have a long list of suitors vying to place their logo in the LA skyline. Months later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, sports leagues were shut down, and live events were canceled.

Sheets and the team at AEG Global Partnerships worked behind the scenes to engineer a creative solution and target the

right partner. “When I became a transactional lawyer, I learned that the best deals solve a unique need for both sides,” she says. “We were looking for a bold, brave, and innovative brand to take a meaningful venue into a new chapter, and we found that in Crypto.com.”

Sheets and AEG pitched their platform as a way for Crypto.com, a fast-growing cryptocurrency platform, to enhance the fan experience, impact the greater community, and leverage emerging technologies. The agreement includes signage and activation spaces at the 18,000-seat arena, which is home to NBA and NHL games, concerts, and world-class events like the Grammy Awards.

It also includes rights at LA LIVE, Microsoft Theater, and the Novo, which Sheets says puts Crypto.com “in the center of live entertainment” for the next two decades. The deal closed on Christmas Day last year.

As we find new ways to live with COVID-19, AEG is pivoting to keep fans engaged during a time of great uncertainty. Sheets and her colleagues have renegotiated contracts and enabled remote experiences while focusing on maintaining critical, long-term relationships with AEG’s key partners.

As venues reopen, they’re investing in mobile ticketing and contactless payments. Pent-up demand promises to drive a major uptick in live entertainment.

Sheets says the boom could last a decade or more—and AEG is positioned as the market leader, ready to welcome fans back with a full slate of games, concerts, events, and festivals.

“When I became a transactional lawyer, I learned that the best deals solve a unique need for both sides.”

KATE SHEETS

Forging a Path to Sustainability

Deckers Brands explores new environmental efforts

By WILL GRANT

Touting such well-known footwear brands like UGG, Koolaburra, HOKA, Teva, and Sanuk, it makes sense that Deckers Brands is as committed to its environmental and sustainability initiatives as the outdoor lifestyles its brands promote.

The multibillion-dollar company with products sold in more than 50 countries with 136 company-owned brick and mortar stores launched its corporate responsibility program way back in 2010 and has published its corporate responsibility and sustainability report since 2014.

Additionally, the company’s Creating Change FY20 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report has illustrated Deckers Brands’ commitment to advancing environmental and social evolutions to its business, brands, supply chain, and communities around the world.

“These are critical times when we must all play our part in delivering upon the United Nations Global Compact Sustainable Development Goals and the vision outlined

in the Paris Agreement to create a future that is sustainable and resilient,” said Dave Powers, president and chief executive officer of Deckers Brands, in a prepared statement announcing the 2020 report. “We believe in transformative change—change that is only possible with a focused and transparent approach. We recognize that sustainability is a journey, and we are committed to doing our part to create change for our employees, our communities, and our planet.”

The Deckers Brand Corporate Responsibility program pledges to employ sustainable business practices along with socially conscious business operations while working to minimize and offset its environmental impact. “Sustainability is not an easy journey, but we strive to support our local communities, maintain an ethical supply chain, and significantly reduce our overall environmental footprint,” its mission reads.

Those who wish to do business with Deckers Brands must complete an annual compliance training and partner with ethical supply chain and restricted substance teams at Deckers Brands to improve working conditions and continue the company’s journey toward wider sustainability.

Deckers Brands has implemented energy usage trackers at manufacturing sites, emissions measurement for inbound and outbound shipping carriers, water and waste reduction plans at corporate offices, and cultivated returned and post-consumer shoe repurposing partnerships.

The complexities of building out more sustainable operations, especially when it comes to supply chain initiatives, was aided in part by Dana Harper, who served as director of international tax at Deckers Brands for six years.

The international tax director was instrumental in the transformation of the global tax department and was able to leave an indelible mark on the tax team’s future planning capabilities and its tax-IT road map, utilizing technological solutions to aid its efforts.

Harper oversaw strategic supply chain planning and restructuring with other major initiatives like implementing a new tax engine across all of Deckers Brands’ regions in 2020. Harper, a tax veteran with prior experience at Oakley, QLogic, Dell Software, and, currently, Therabody, was able to sponsor and lead cross-functional finance initiatives during her six years at Deckers Brands, while also aiding the organization’s broader environmental and sustainability efforts. Harper was instrumental in completing Deckers Brands; supply chain pledge to “ensure workers all over the globe are treated fairly and are able to conduct their work in a safe environment,” as evidenced in its responsibility report.

Those efforts are obviously in line with the wider Deckers Brands employee base, as the company was recently featured as one of Newsweek’s “Most Loved Workplaces” for 2021. Deckers Brands landed as the sixth most recognized company, citing employee happiness and satisfaction.

“Some key reasons why Newsweek made this selection are: the way our culture and values guide us, our commitment to doing good in our communities, and the support and collaboration across the business,” Powers said in a prepared statement. “Knowing that this ranking is based on employee feedback and is representative of their voices makes it especially meaningful. I couldn’t be more proud.”

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

A member of the United Nations Global Compact since 2016, Deckers follows the initiative’s Sustainable Development Goals to set targets for the business and operations.

Materials

Maximize the amount of preferred materials

Waste

Sustainably reduce waste generated

Water

Reduce water consumption and improve water quality

Climate and Clean Energy

Reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions

Chemistry and Customer Safety

Reduce or eliminate hazardous chemicals

Human Rights

Positively impact communities where Deckers operates

Gender Equality, Quality Education, and Reduced Inequalities

Promote diversity, gender equality, female empowerment, and inclusion for all

Source: Deckers 2021 Corporate Responsibility Report

Dana Harper,

Ryan congratulates our friend and client, on being recognized as a Top Chief Tax Officer.

Dana’s track record of transforming the global tax function into a profit center has been instrumental in her success and will prove to be valuable in her new role at Theragun. Ryan is proud to serve as Dana’s global strategic tax partner.

Ryan, an award-winning global tax services and software provider, is the largest firm in the world dedicated exclusively to business taxes. The firm provides an integrated suite of international tax services on a multijurisdictional basis, including recovery, cost management, compliance, consulting, and technology services. With a focus on transformation and automation, Ryan helps clients more effectively and efficiently manage their tax liabilities around the world.

There is more to technology than 0s and 1s. Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool leads an inspiring section of women in tech who are driving business innovation, empowering their teams, and building a path for others in the ever-changing field.

Love Story Photography

Christine Vanderpool VP of IT Strategy, Architecture & Security Florida Crystals Corporation

INNOVATION THROUGH

INSPIRATION

INNOVATION THROUGH INSPIRATION

Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool works to build future IT leaders who have what it takes to meet changing cybersecurity challenges head-on

By Maggie Lynch

“I believe that every person in their career should have our mission statement,” says Christine Vanderpool, vice president of information technology strategy, architecture, and security at Florida Crystals. “My mission statement right now is by [Mahatma] Gandhi and it is, ‘The sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have but how many leaders you create.’ That’s something I try to emulate every day.”

Creating leaders and innovating to meet cybersecurity demands is just what Vanderpool does in her position at Florida Crystals, the world’s largest producer of raw sugar cane and refined sugar cane. She gained experience as a leader previously while at Kaiser Permanente and as CISO of Molson Coors. Throughout her time in cybersecurity, she has worked to keep up with the ever-changing environment of technology while lifting others up the ladder along the way.

CALM AMID CRISIS

One of the ways in which the field of cybersecurity has changed, according to

Vanderpool, is that everyone is a target. “We’re definitely seeing the emergence of bad actors that don’t really care what industry you’re in,” she explains. “Anyone can be attacked because anyone who makes any sort of money is, of course, of interest.”

She adds, “It’s not a case of if; it’s a case of when. So you better be prepared, and you better know how you will respond and recover and do it fast and efficiently and stop an attack before it gets out of control.”

Vanderpool also notes that the attacks are no longer sophisticated, but there are more uses of phishing emails and calls. These give hackers the opportunity to infiltrate companies without needing to find any coding errors, and when these attacks proliferate, they’re often very successful. In 2020, according to Vanderpool, billions of dollars of bitcoin were paid out because of situations like these.

Collaboration is imperative as these data breaches start to affect the world outside of the companies that are targeted—especially as so many people moved home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vanderpool points to an early 2021 cyberattack on JBS, a meatpacking company. As a result, the supply chain was thwarted, the price of meat skyrocketed, and consumers’ lives were impacted.

Staying ahead of the curve on these attacks and ensuring preparedness is something that Vanderpool says is possible through the close-knit cybersecurity community. She notes that only “a relatively small group of people” has been at the senior level in the cybersecurity industry for a long period of time. “Even if you’re competitors in your particular market, you’ll still see them

come together,” Vanderpool says. “All these organizations [like IT-ISAC] within the industry are getting ahead of the game and we’re doing it together, as a collective. It’s camaraderie across the entire discipline.”

The collective cybersecurity community can also innovate because it is growing as more perspectives are entering the field. According to Vanderpool, there has been an uptick in the number of women in cybersecurity.

“There were very few women, especially in chief information security officer roles,” Vanderpool notes, “and we’re seeing a huge increase in the CISOs that are coming about.

“I do think that women bring a certain perspective to the role that has not been seen before,” she adds. “But I think you need all types—all types of diversity, all types of backgrounds—in order to tackle what we have to deal with from a community perspective, because we’re all going to bring different ways of looking at a situation or a problem.”

BUILDING TOMORROW’S LEADERS

According to Vanderpool, South Florida’s technical market has grown immensely over the past few years, making her mission to enrich the cybercommunity even more relevant.

“There’s a lot of reports out there that are saying that Miami is going to become the new San Francisco,” Vanderpool says. “So getting ahead of that and making sure we have the right talent in Florida—and giving them the opportunity to grow their expertise and talent—is really important.”

“I think you need all types—all types of diversity, all types of backgrounds—in order to tackle what we have to deal with from a community perspective, because we’re all going to bring different ways of looking at a situation or a problem.”

Vanderpool wants to continue to uplift women in the field and encourage more to join. While she serves as a role model inside Florida Crystals, Vanderpool is also committed to volunteering and encouraging women outside the company to enter the field, starting with school-aged girls and young professionals.

“One thing that we have to do a really good job of as CISO professionals is get out in the community and explain what cybersecurity is to young women and girls in elementary, middle school, and high school,” she says.

Vanderpool also sits on the board and the women’s committee of a nonprofit, Tech Hub South Florida, which focuses on growing technical education initiatives and programs in school systems as well as in government and business environments. The goal of the nonprofit is to tap into and expand South Florida’s technology verticals to create sustainable economic impact.

“It’s the way of the future. Technology is embedded in everything that we do nowadays, and almost everything you touch throughout the day has some piece of technology in it,” Vanderpool says. “The amount of devices that are all going to be interconnected is growing exponentially, and the need for more and more IT professionals is just going to continue to grow too.”

Through her position with the nonprofit and as a senior executive at Florida Crystals, Vanderpool is upholding her mission statement. She’s creating leaders that will not only continue to innovate through the changing IT industry but also reflect the future of the workforce.

“One thing that we have to do a really good job of as CISO professionals is get out in the community and explain what cybersecurity is to young women and girls in elementary, middle school, and high school.”

Samanntha DuBridge VP of Global Benefits, Culture & Engagement, HR Mergers & Acquisitions, and Employee Mobility Hewlett Packard Enterprise

CONNECTED TO CULTURE CONNECTED TO CULTURE

Vice president of global benefits, culture and engagement, HR mergers and acquisitions, and employee mobility.

It’s a long title. And although there are many complex tasks and important responsibilities involved, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Samanntha DuBridge explains her role with one simple phrase. “I’m here to create the programs and services that

By Zach Baliva

Photos By Cass Davis

deliver an exceptional experience to my colleagues and their families,” she says.

DuBridge is a veteran human resources leader who’s logged two decades in healthcare and technology. She’s spent most of that time with Hewlett Packard companies, and after more than twenty years, she’s still excited about the chance she has to contribute to a strong corporate culture, create professional opportunities, and help others take important career steps.

Despite her sustained success and emergence as an expert in the field, DuBridge didn’t originally target a life and career in HR. She was born in the Bay Area of California, nurtured an interest in healthcare, and set out to work in hospital administration. DuBridge stayed on that track at San Jose State University, where she completed undergraduate and graduate programs.

During that time, she was already employed at Kaiser Permanente, and a conversation with the organization’s HR director

As a leading tech innovator, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is always evolving. HR VP Samanntha DuBridge works to ensure each HPE team member embodies the values that have made the company special since its beginning

“Good HR happens when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes. We think about the details that matter to new team members to make the onboarding process clear and simple.”

put her on a new path. “I saw the opportunity to take my passion for healthcare and combine it with my desire to help people and their families,” she said. The HR director showed a personal interest in DuBridge and helped her find new opportunities in the organization.

The valuable mentorship she received made an impact, and as DuBridge left Kaiser in 1995, she resolved to help others in a similar way. A move to National Semiconductor gave her foundational tech experience before she joined HP in 2000. In her current role at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), DuBridge helps craft strategic direction and designs all global benefits and mobility programs.

While these activities keep DuBridge busy, she also provides critical support for HPE’s mergers and acquisitions by managing HR-related due diligence from concept to completion. Once deals close, she oversees all aspects of people integration including change management and alignment.

“These steps are critical to ensuring alignment and getting the most value from each deal the organization brings to the table,” she says. “Effective leaders have created a great culture here, and we want to keep that intact without losing anything that made our new colleagues special when they were independent companies.”

It’s an active area, as HPE leaders have stated publicly that they are executing an

“We have to keep evolving and innovating so we can meet HPE’s business objectives while also meeting the needs of our team members. HR leaders in tech can’t afford to let their programs and policies get stale and outdated.”

“accelerated” M&A strategy to fill “critical portfolio gaps” and pursue “enhanced competitive positioning.” HPE has announced twenty major acquisitions since the second quarter of fiscal year 2016. In 2021, key acquisitions included Cloud Physics with its software platform to monitor and analyze IT infrastructure, Determined AI’s open-source machine learning platform, Zetro’s cloud data management and protection software, and Ampool’s expanded capabilities in high-performance SQL analytics.

Each of these multimillion dollar deals also added hundreds of new employees to the HPE ecosystem, and DuBridge and her team members work overtime to make sure each one has a seamless transition. “Good HR happens when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” she says. “We think about the details that matter to new team members to make the onboarding process clear and simple.”

HPE’s benefits and HR teams activate to make sure new employees don’t miss a week of payroll or see interruptions in medical coverage. “Employees deserve benefits they understand and that give them more control,” says Alison Richards, CEO of Bind Benefits. “Samanntha understands those needs, and now HPE team members have an affordable, personalized health plan that makes it easy for them to make informed choices.” The teams simultaneously work to communicate policy and procedures while hosting team building events that give acquired employees the chance to interact with their new HPE colleagues and experience the HPE culture.

By now, Hewlett Packard’s origins story is well-known throughout high tech. Bill Hewlett and David Packard essentially created Silicon Valley when they started their fledgling company in a one-car garage. It was 1939, and the leaders joined forces to manufacture and sell electronic test equipment. Their first client was a local film studio working on a small motion picture called Fantasia.

As the company grew to serve Walt Disney and other iconic clients, Hewlett and Packard remained vigilant about building an environment where people were welcomed, respected, and empowered. “Each person in our company is important, and every job is important,” Packard said.

Alight is proud to partner with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and applauds Samanntha DuBridge for her excellence in driving innovation, cultural transformation, health and wellbeing initiatives that make a real difference for HPE and its team members.

With an unwavering belief that a company’s success starts with its people, Alight Solutions is a leading cloud-based provider of integrated digital human capital and business solutions. At Alight, we’re reimagining how people and organizations thrive.

Learn more at alight.com

Our mission is to raise the standard of healthcare for everyone. Because high-quality healthcare shouldn’t be exclusive, expensive or hard to use. You deserve better.

It takes a great partner to reimagine every moment of health

Although HPE spun off from HP in 2015, DuBridge and her colleagues continue to honor, protect, and enhance the legacy HP culture. Today’s HPE is built around important corporate objectives that include trust and respect for individuals, achievement and contribution, results through teamwork, meaningful innovation, and uncompromising integrity.

Still, the company has had to adjust and evolve over the years, including in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic changed workplace interactions. In response, HPE implemented a program called Edge-to-Office to create a unique hybrid experience for its sixty thousand team members around the world.

HPE has totally reimagined the workplace in all locations worldwide to allow for enhanced flexibility. DuBridge says she and her colleagues first polled leaders and employees to discover preferences. A large majority preferred to spend most of their time working off-site, whether to help with family needs, reduce commuting time (and expense), or both.

Edge-to-Office created collaborative hubs for in-person meetings and emphasizes other ways for remote workers to connect. Employees who work off-site have the tools, workstations, and devices they need to maintain innovation, collaboration, and productivity. An Edge Council Committee engages all employees, supports leaders, and provides volunteer and team building opportunities.

“This is about personal choice and employees and managers deciding what’s best for them and their teams,” DuBridge says. “We trust our employees to know where they need to be at any given time, and this will be the new model going forward.”

As she moves these important initiatives along, DuBridge is always thinking about how she can keep employees connected to new opportunities. In 2022, she’s adding a community pillar to HPE’s wellness program. The new feature will remove barriers to communication and employees the chance to connect for virtual coffee meetings and collaborate in new ways. “We may be sixty thousand employees strong, but we don’t stand on formality or hierarchy,” she says. “We have an open-door policy.”

As a female leader in HR and tech, DuBridge is especially vocal about promoting opportunities for women. HPE has an active and robust employee resource group for women and an industry-leading parental leave policy.

The world is changing, and although there are challenges, DuBridge says the pace and uncertainty keep her energized. “We have to keep evolving and innovating so we can meet HPE’s business objectives while also meeting the needs of our team members,” she says. “HR leaders in tech can’t afford to let their programs and policies get stale and outdated.”

Even in the pandemic environment, HPE had a strong 2021. The organization saw demand grow by 16 percent with revenue up 3 percent to $27.8 billion. Its workforce is ready to meet the challenges that the future brings as the company continues to pursue additional acquisitions and execute its ongoing aggressive growth plan.

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“In today’s ever-evolving and changing work environments, the need for HR programs to support employee’s needs has never been more critical or challenging. Samanntha DuBridge is proof that it can be done and done successfully.”

Anthem BlueCross is proud to support Hewlett Packard Enterprises. Anthem members benefit from access to the largest provider network with industry leading cost savings. Through our clinical programs, coverage, and services, Anthem is committed to improving the health of our members and being a lifelong partner in healthcare.

Samanntha DuBridge, Vice President Global Benefits, Culture/Engagement, HR Mergers and Acquisitions, Employee Mobility

Congratulations, Samanntha DuBridge, on your feature article. We appreciate all you do for the health of HPE employees.

Real health care change starts with today’s benefits visionaries.

So thankful for the Bind plan that my employer offers! I knew the exact cost to deliver our sweet baby boy and guess what?! It was under $600! I had the choice and ability to shop for my care and not guess about costs.

Employee enrolled in Bind

DRIVING

DRIVING INNOVATION WITH TECHNOLOGY

INNOVATION WITH TECHNOLOGY

Heidi Mattison emphasizes continuous improvement to anticipate the scale and speed of the automotive industry

By Natalie Kochanov

over the course of her career. Today, as chief information officer (CIO) at Superior Industries, a top manufacturer of aluminum wheels, she uses technology to support business growth in the face of industry-wide challenges. At the same time, she leads transformational change across her team of information technology professionals by embracing continuous improvement and foregrounding Superior’s vision for the future.

Heidi Mattison never doubted where her professional path would lead her.

“I was an automotive baby,” Mattison says. “My father was a forty-two-year General Motors employee, so I grew up with the automotive industry in my blood. I always knew that’s where I was headed.”

True to her prediction, Mattison has approached the industry from all angles

Mattison received her formal introduction to the automotive industry at luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz, where she worked as a packaging and process engineer. From Mercedes, she moved to Tier 1 supplier Robert Bosch, operating in a supply chain and production scheduling capacity. She then consulted at Accenture, helping clients implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business process harmonization.

“I see the business come together like layers on a painting, and my team has the opportunity to provide technology as the canvas.”

After further stints at Stellantis and ZF Group, Mattison joined Superior in March 2021. “I’ve been on both sides of the coin in the automotive world—the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and the supplier—and I’ve lived on the shop floor and in the administrative offices,” she says of her industry experience. “No matter what part of the industry I seem to be in, I’m equally fascinated and ignited by the goals and the mission.”

Mattison’s passion for the industry—not to mention her ability to understand and empathize with teams spanning diverse functional areas—opens doors for building strong partnerships at Superior. “First and foremost, my role is to enable our talented employees, engineers, and operations teams to produce world-class wheels for our OEM and Aftermarket customers,” she says. “I see the business come together like layers on a painting, and my team has the opportunity to provide technology as the canvas.”

In her day-to-day work as CIO, Mattison strives to maintain 100 percent uptime at each of Superior’s manufacturing locations around the world, and to provide an exemplary enduser experience across the board. She also supports her team’s projects around application development, infrastructure, network, digitalization, and data analytics.

Mattison makes certain that her team’s work aligns with Superior’s broader organizational goals, from making data-driven decisions to reaching environmental health and safety benchmarks. “I’m incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by senior leaders who value technology. They believe we are the backbone of innovation and we’re critical to enabling growth at the scale and speed at which the automotive industry moves,” she says.

It has been particularly critical for Mattison to have a seat at the table amid Superior’s ongoing acquisition of UNIWHEELS, a fellow wheel manufacturer. “Our ERP initiative is certainly one of the most critical components,” she explains. “Having a harmonized and adaptive next-generation ERP will be a big leap in giving our executive team real-time data at their fingertips. I also want to create a multilayered IT architecture that will provide a solid foundation for bringing our company together post-acquisition.”

Heidi Mattison CIO Superior Industries

Derek Cookson

As Superior evolves, Mattison reinforces the company’s vision among her team—and emphasizes the part that each member plays. “We have a lot on our plate, so keeping our eye on the mission of the company and understanding that we play a vital role is really important,” she confirms. “For instance, providing a secure network enables our employees to stay home and stay healthy. It allows us to gather data from our manufacturing equipment and turn it into advancements in digital manufacturing processes and procedures.”

A firm proponent of continuous improvement, Mattison encourages her team to explore emerging technologies and engage with new trends. In addition, she sponsors team members who wish to pursue certification in Lean Six Sigma. Two members achieved their Green Belt in 2021, and one went on to obtain a Black Belt.

“Continuous improvement enables us to move forward more efficiently,” she says. “We’re starting to develop our own vernacular and our own patterns of working together within this mindset. It’s going to merge all functional areas into one very cohesive team.”

Mattison believes that a unified problemsolving perspective will give Superior an edge

in tackling technological advances and industry curveballs alike. “It’s fascinating how the worlds of technology and business are colliding and merging,” she says. “The role of a technology professional and a CIO has certainly transitioned over the past decade, and it’s exciting to see where it’s going.”

Wherever that may be, Mattison is right where she belongs.

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“The combination of a passion for not only what you do but also the industry you are in is key to having a successful career, which is the map Heidi Mattison has followed to become a truly inspirational leader.”

For twenty-six years, Thirdware has been delivering transformational solutions at the intersection of business and technology. We are a trusted advisor to numerous organizations like Superior Industries in the areas of IIoT, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

“It’s fascinating how the worlds of technology and business are colliding and merging. The role of a technology professional and a CIO has certainly transitioned over the past decade, and it’s exciting to see where it’s going.”

DELIVERING DIVERSITY DELIVERING DIVERSITY

Veteran diversity practitioner Iris Birungi Peña ensures Instacart corporate leadership represents the communities the company serves

By Zach Baliva

In January 2020, Instacart, the popular grocery pick-up and delivery service, had nearly two thousand employees. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and governors across the nation started issuing shelter in place orders. Grocery delivery became an essential service overnight.

On March 24, 2020, CEO Apoorva Mehta announced in a blog post his plans to hire three hundred thousand shoppers over the next three months. That aggressive ninetyday goal was met in four weeks. In addition to doubling the shopper community, the company had to scale its corporate employees to keep up with demand on the platform.

Iris Birungi Peña stepped into a fastmoving company in the middle of a hiring spree when she joined Instacart as the tech company’s director of diversity recruiting and hiring equity in April 2021.

Peña is originally from Nairobi, Kenya, but has lived and worked in New York and Toronto. The cross-cultural experiences showed her the importance of diversity and inclusion, and those values entered her professional life at the start. She graduated from the University of Windsor and studied human resources management at Humber

College before joining Goldman Sachs. Over her seven-year tenure, Peña managed divisional D&I initiatives and diversity campus recruiting pipeline programs.

In 2014, Peña moved to Bank of America. She was championing similar campus efforts when a huge opportunity presented itself. In response to a Forbes article on diversity in leadership across financial services, the chief diversity officer built out a strategy on how the bank will focus on increasing Black and Latino/a leadership. As result, Peña was asked to lead strategic efforts on attracting and hiring Black and Latino/a executive talent across the bank.

“Buy in from the top always helps diversity efforts succeed,” Peña says. As head of underrepresented minority executive recruiting, she created a program designed to recruit and retain minority executive talent. In her work, Peña created

“Diversity isn’t something that only a few people do. It shouldn’t be handled by a group, or a committee, or a small team.

Diversity is everyone’s job.”

Iris Birungi Peña

Director of Diversity Recruiting & Hiring Instacart

Devon Codrington

responsibility and accountability measures for current senior leaders to support the external talent pipelining. By the time she left the bank in 2021, diversity was infused into key stages of the recruiting life cycle and activities at every level.

That’s how Peña believes every company should operate, and it’s the philosophy she brought to Instacart. “Diversity isn’t something that only a few people do,” she says. “It shouldn’t be handled by a group, or a committee, or a small team. Diversity is everyone’s job.”

Diversity is an important concept that can and should shape corporate vision, and Peña knows her strategies can never impede business objectives. That was especially true when she joined Instacart in the middle of its COVID hiring push.

“Even in a period of unprecedented growth, it’s important to stop and think about whether you’re creating a diverse workforce that reflects the communities you serve because that’s ultimately going to drive how your customers engage with you,” she says.

Instacart was indeed reflecting its communities in the field, as many in its new shopper population were women and people of color. Peña, however, noticed opportunities for improvement on the company’s corporate side.

“We needed better representation in leadership roles,” she says. “Black and Latinx people and women are underrepresented in the tech industry, and we want to ensure that our team reflects our customers, shoppers, and the communities we live and work in.”

Instacart doesn’t use D&I or even DEI. Practitioners at Instacart prefer DEB, an acronym that stands for diversity, equity, and belonging. “We’re all diverse, and we know it’s important to include everyone,

but belonging is what matters,” Peña says. “We really make an impact through diversity measures when we create a sense of belonging.”

That starts with a willingness to have hard conversations and fix systemic problems. With charge from Head of DEB Jennifer Sutton and the chief human resources officer, Peña set out to build a robust diversity recruitment program by creating strategies and recruiting interventions aimed at tackling systemic barriers to entry for underrepresented talent.

It was important for Peña to have accountability across the recruiting organization. As a result, inclusive hiring training is now mandatory for all recruiters and a diverse candidate slate for all manager roles is required. Peña came to tech from financial services and says her new industry is not far from where her former one was. The tech space is booming and filled with opportunities—but people in her position need to make sure they are helping all candidates discover these opportunities.

“Many Black and Latinx students simply don’t have easy access to schools. Companies who only recruit from top schools and Ivies, which are predominately white institutions are closing the door to people who need a chance to show what they can do,” she says, adding that her peers need to revisit their overall recruiting strategies and consider creating a path to roles for those who gained their education in a nontraditional way—and remain open to candidates with nontraditional backgrounds.

Right now, Peña is thriving as a leader in the DEB space, and she envisions a world in which diversity becomes second nature to recruiting. Where leaders and recruiters are held accountable for building a representative workforce.

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“Creating a sense of belonging has never been more crucial, and Iris Birungi Peña’s program at Instacart is making a true difference for diversity. It is true that to drive a successful diversity program, you must first be willing to have hard and open conversations.”

“We really make an impact through diversity measures when we create a sense of belonging.”

INNOVATION THROUGH BUSINESS GROWTH ENABLING INNOVATION THROUGH BUSINESS GROWTH ENABLING

Renee Pearson places data, process, and technology at the center to enable Republic National Distributing Company’s business strategy

By Natalie Kochanov

Renee Pearson appreciates the value of a strategic road map. However, she admits that—in the early days—she didn’t always have one for her career.

“A lot of people try to plan or chart their course. My journey has been a little bit different in that, oftentimes, I took jobs that were brand-new and had never been defined before,” Pearson says.

Pearson’s willingness to blaze new trails has brought her to Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), a wine and spirits distributor where she serves as senior vice president of digital transformation and business engagement. With her technology expertise and innovative mindset, she is driving the company’s growth in the present—while keeping one eye fixed firmly on the future.

Before landing at RNDC in August 2020, Pearson spent nearly twenty years at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, a global

Renee Pearson

SVP of Digital Transformation & Business Engagement

Republic National Distributing Company

“The best part about working in technology is that it’s always changing. There’s always new technology capabilities to learn and [always a need to] figure out how they apply to your business and your industry.”

Haigwood Studios

provider of consumer products where she led teams in business intelligence, information technology strategy, and innovation. During her tenure, she facilitated international business teams in the divestiture of Kimberly-Clark’s healthcare operation, an experience that offered her a new perspective on how international companies operate.

As Pearson honed her understanding of data and technology, she began to realize the possibilities at her fingertips. “I saw a need and an opportunity for us to elevate what our business could do with technology,” she says. “So, out of passion, I developed an informal innovation team on the side.”

With the support of Kimberly-Clark’s leadership, Pearson’s new team went global and even commercialized an Internet of Things product in the US. For Pearson, though, it was time to look outside the organization for her next challenge. She moved to a competitor, Georgia-Pacific, for about two years, during which time she oversaw business integration and change in an endto-end digital transformation program for the consumer division.

When RNDC came calling, Pearson knew the distributor would be a great fit for her skill set. She also knew she could continue breaking new professional ground as a leader at RNDC, which encourages higherups to dive in alongside their teams.

“My current leadership style is more situational,” she says, explaining that she once believed leadership to be one-size-fits-all. “I try to tailor my leadership and how I work with people to the experience of each team member and to the situation at hand.”

Beyond adapting to the situation, Pearson strives to keep her team on the same page when it comes to RNDC’s long-term goals. “One of the most important aspects of leadership—along with trust and communication—is establishing a vision. If your team doesn’t understand the overall vision and their role in that vision, they aren’t going to function well as a team or reach their full potential,” she says.

As for the vision itself, Pearson is building a strategy around data, process, and technology—all of which she sees as enablers for achieving business outcomes.

She’s streamlining what RNDC has gained through recent mergers and acquisitions to accelerate future business growth and speed of integration.

“As we mature business processes, there are opportunities to look at automation,” she says. “Once you’ve got a standardized and optimized process that can be automated, technology is great at increasing speed, delivery, and consistency.”

Furthermore, Pearson has established a technology innovation council to help RNDC capitalize on promising ideas. “It’s about understanding the potential of those ideas, presenting them to the business, and incubating them while we figure out which ones are right to move through the pipeline,” she elaborates. “We’re only at the beginning stages, but it’s something I’m continuing to drive internally to make sure that we have places for ideas to go and we’re identifying opportunities to accelerate business growth.”

“Renee is a forward-thinking senior executive who fully recognizes the power of data to drive insights that enable business growth,” says Andrew Wells, CEO and founding partner of Aspirent Consulting. “We’re proud to partner with her on RNDC’s digital and analytics journey.”

As she steers RNDC’s growth, Pearson makes a point of giving back to the Atlanta

“One of the most important aspects of leadership—along with trust and communication— is establishing a vision. If your team doesn’t understand the overall vision of where you’re headed and their role in that vision, they aren’t going to function well together and reach their full potential.”

metropolitan area where she lives and works. She empowers other women in IT through membership in organizations such as Women in Technology and Women Business Collaborative, and she leverages her role as a board member for local nonprofit Inspiredu.

“The mission of Inspiredu is to close the digital divide—very simply, to make sure every child has the digital capabilities to learn in today’s environment,” she says. “Being in a technology field, I have opportunities to connect corporate sponsors with Inspiredu to help schools provide digital literacy to students and families. RNDC, for example, was able to donate older tablets and laptops to Inspiredu, who then partnered with schools in the community to provide hardware and digital learning tools to students.”

Pearson is proud of the ways she’s using technology to enable RNDC and its future. “The best part about working in technology is that it’s always changing. There’s always new technology capabilities to learn and [always a need to] figure out how they apply to your business and your industry,” she says.

And as new ideas and technologies change the business landscape for RNDC and its enterprises, you can be sure that Pearson will be in the driver seat, ready to change course and blaze fresh trails.

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“Renee Pearson’s adaptive style and approach in working with others accompanied by having a clear strategic plan forward has been key to her success. She is making waves not only at RNDC but in her community by giving back.”

AFFIRMING

TRADITIONAL NON the AFFIRMING TRADITIONAL NON the

Hayley Gonzales navigated her early career on her own. Now, she’s mentoring others through their own winding career journeys.

By Billy Yost

Hayley Gonzales Managing Counsel, Commercial Affirm Kelsey Jean

There are so many parts of Hayley Gonzales’s legal journey that serve as inspiration to anyone who considers their journey “nontraditional.” The managing counsel at fintech company Affirm has pivoted hard and, early on, without the benefit of mentorship that could have helped guide the young lawyer on a worn path.

Gonzales is proud of the “wonderful working class” family she was born into, but it also meant that she’d have to find her own way in her pursuit of a legal career. It’s why the lawyer is so passionate about mentoring now, and why her commercial success at Affirm is just a small part of what makes Gonzales a lawyer you should know.

“There weren’t any lawyers in my family,” Gonzales explains. “I navigated my way to the legal industry with a ton of unknowns. Now I want to make sure that women have opportunities that I didn’t have and demonstrate that an unconventional career path is still a worthy one.”

THE VALUE OF PIVOTING

Gonzales’s experience is not singular; there are so many who examine multiple routes before ultimately finding their way, but those stories are often eclipsed by those who have known exactly what they wanted to pursue since childhood. Neither story is inherently “right”—it’s what one does with their experience that defines them.

The challenges for Gonzales were significant. She attended law school part time her first year to be able to support herself. “I was convinced I would ultimately be a litigator and prosecutor,” the lawyer remembers. “So I spent my entire law school experience focusing on that trajectory.”

The problem was that it wasn’t the right fit. Watching litigators seemingly “fight just to fight” and the seemingly arbitrary nature of the adversarial process didn’t speak to what motivated Gonzales to pursue law in the first place. But that would mean changing horses midstream and seeking out a new practice area after training almost exclusively for a job she no longer wanted.

Gonzales was able to secure a clerkship in bankruptcy court, which provided an essential segue between litigation and transactional work. After building out significant in-house experience at Loring Ward, the lawyer came to Affirm in 2017 where she has risen through three promotions and helped shepherd monumental partnerships between the company and the most wellknown retailers around.

“I feel like I’m in an incredible place,” Gonzales says. “I think it’s a testament to our products and our consumer focus that we are partnered with many of the biggest retailers in the US like Walmart, Shopify, and Amazon.”

The lawyer handled the Amazon and Walmart deals personally, and it’s a testament to both the mentorship she’s found at

Affirm and the willingness to grow into new and increasingly complex areas.

CELEBRATING THE NONTRADITIONAL

Gonzales doesn’t want her own success to be an anomaly. The lawyer is a board member for the San Francisco Women in Tech and founded Unfold Careers, a service that helps those with winding journeys strengthen their résumés and find roles of which they can be proud. “There are so many people who are skilled and talented but aren’t entirely sure what to do with themselves on paper,” Gonzales explains. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with former convicts who have been able to go on to successful careers; they just needed to be able to explain their stories and demonstrate their abilities.”

The attorney also created a mentorship program for diverse law students at Affirm. The legal department is partnering with organizations, such as the National Native American Law Student Association and the Latino Education Advancement Fund, to mentor students from underrepresented

“There are so

many people who are skilled and talented but aren’t entirely sure what to do with themselves on paper.”

communities and provide the kind of guidance Gonzales wouldn’t find until later in her career.

“Newfront is so proud to partner with Hayley, who has been a key contributor to the success we see with Affirm today,” says Ivoree Reinaldo, senior vice president and principle at Newfront. “Hayley’s commitment to using her expertise to support people who have disadvantages in life is deeply aligned with our core values, including our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

“When something bothers me, I just want to immediately go and change it,” Gonzales says. “These are small pieces of such a huge puzzle, but this is what I can do with the resources I have to make a difference. If I’m able to change even one person’s life, that matters.”

The support systems in place for law students who share Gonzales’s desire to pivot are few and far between. Her own journey should serve as a reminder that not only is pivoting possible but also that one can find meaning and motivation in that change. There are dozens who have already benefited from Gonzales’s willingness to embrace difficult change. And her willingness to reach back to those facing their own difficult transitions needs to be emulated.

QUICK TIPS FROM A RÉ SUM É PRO

Hayley Gonzales’s nontraditional path is now her superpower. The lawyer has some helpful tips for those working on a résumé whose own journey may not fit a common narrative.

Don’t Hesitate to Explain: “If there are gaps in your résumé or you’ve only spent short stints of time at a job, provide a brief parenthetical next to each role. Those are important details that might help you avoid immediately being discarded as a serial job-hopper.”

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“Hayley Gonzales’s insights on nontraditional or pivoting paths in one’s career is insightful, encouraging, and a great reminder that a career is journey with different roads to be traveled by each of us. Her goal of helping others who are feeling the desire to pivot is inspiring.”

Mirror the Job You Want: “If your résumé looks completely different from the job description you’re applying for, you likely won’t have a great chance of landing the role. Make sure you’re mirroring the job description.”

Newfront is intent on transforming insurance into an effortless process that delights clients. We are committed to changing the way people create, understand, select, transact, and use insurance, fundamentally changing the approach so that it starts and ends with the client, not the product. At Newfront, we combine expertise and technology to enable the world’s risk takers to run better companies and turn dreams into realities with greater certainty and speed. We are proud to partner with Hayley Gonzales and Affirm as they have changed lending for the better—these relationships are what makes Newfront the company we are today.

“When something bothers me, I just want to immediately go and change it.”

BETTING HERSELF ON BETTING HERSELF ON

Maggie Lassack uses objective thinking to confront imposter syndrome and build her role as the privacy and cybersecurity counsel at Polaris

By Claire Redden

Maggie Lassack still remembers her first law firm job in New York City. Shared office spaces were routine, and overhearing your colleagues’ phone calls was inescapable. Then, one evening, Lassack overheard her officemate on the phone; she was crying to her mom that she wasn’t smart enough for her job.

“I started laughing to myself because I remember having the same conversation with my mom a year earlier,” Lassack says. As it turns out, imposter syndrome, the internal belief that you’re not as competent

as others perceive you to be, disproportionately affects high-achieving women.

“I find the timing of it interesting. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for when those thoughts come up,” Lassack says. “It’s like alternating between having the confidence and then not.” But when the opportunity came for her to join the legal team at Polaris, she did what she encourages other people to do: focus on the facts.

“Even if I had doubts, I stepped back from those feelings to think objectively. After looking at the data and focusing on the facts,

“My goal has always been to make processes as easy as possible, striking the balance of getting the right results but minimizing the time spent getting there.”

Maggie Lassack

Privacy and Cybersecurity Counsel Polaris

Courtesy of Maggie Lassack

I wasn’t going to bet against myself.” That’s how she decided to leave her job at 3M and join Polaris, where she’d be one of about six lawyers working with the new general counsel to build a team of subject-matter experts.

After the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, Lassack saw opportunities for the team to simplify and streamline the operational work. “My goal has always been to make processes as easy as possible, striking the balance of getting the right results but minimizing the time spent getting there.”

The idea that someone else should suffer through tedious work because the person in their position before them did goes against everything Lassack believes. “I want to make things easier for other people, but I also make them easier for myself because, in the long run, it leads to a better client experience and greater productivity, as well.”

She had the foresight to consolidate privacy notices, streamline processing records, and simplify contracting—the seemingly minor types of things that turn out to be tedious and time-consuming. That initiative laid the foundation for Lassack to build the privacy program and her role as the leader of it. “Starting with a team of one, I focused on building a network across the entire enterprise,” she explains. She works with that network to coordinate and simplify privacy processes into one consistent method used across different businesses, functions, and geographies.

In the instance of vendor assessment, for example, Lassack explains that “rather than having every pocket do their own thing to figure out several different processes, we’re

working toward a system where the enduser can follow one process that covers the relevant risk areas, and we can easily adapt that process as the risks change.”

She and her IT colleagues have also worked with the vendor, TrustArc, to implement its cookie consent tool throughout the enterprise, creating consistency across different web platforms that helps them prepare for new laws. “We’re working to put in place that foundational piece we can use to manage cookie preferences consistently, so we can quickly make changes as legal requirements evolve.”

In the cybersecurity portion of her role, Lassack works cross-functionally to collaborate with and provide legal advice to the information and product security teams. Together, with the support of senior leadership, they’ve developed an executive cybersecurity governance council that they use to improve communication, transparency, and governance at both the executive and board levels.

“In my career, I’ve sometimes seen that women are harder on each other,” she says. But when working in a predominately male environment, “it’s important that, as women, we help and be there for each other, to have that sounding board.”

That’s why Lassack joined Women in Law, Privacy, and Security, a networking group in the Twin Cities that is committed to helping women in the privacy and information security fields grow in their careers. “Most of us are struggling with the same things,” she explains, “and it helps to have that outlet, that opportunity to share and figure out strategies to be successful.”

When it comes to coping with imposter syndrome, Lassack stresses the importance of sharing your experience with others, as she did while reassuring her office mate in New York that evening.

“It’s really about getting to the facts and remembering that you’re not alone,” she says. “Nobody knows everything, nobody has it all together. Be as kind and fair to yourself as you would be to your friend. I’m not saying there’s a switch you can flip, but even just being mindful of it and taking a step back when you have those thoughts is helpful.”

Lassack continues to use her expertise and lead with the philosophy of consistency and efficiency for all. By developing cross-functional strategies, she builds a foundation to gradually implement automated technologies to make the work easier for everyone over time.

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“Maggie Lassack’s story is a strong reminder that imposter syndrome can be especially strong for accomplished women. But when you remember to focus on your strengths, you can achieve anything. It is an important reminder that women need to support other women so we can raise each other up every chance we get.”

“Maggie is a true thought leader in the privacy space. She has a natural talent for identifying opportunities to create unique value for her business while making connections to uplift other women at the same time.” –Jason Wesbecher, Chief

Revenue Officer, TrustArc

“Even if I had doubts, I stepped back from those feelings to think objectively. After looking at the data and focusing on the facts, I wasn’t going to bet against myself.”

INSIGHTS, DATA NOT INSIGHTS, DATA NOT

How Kristen FitzPatrick built a best-in-class insights and analytics team at Inspire Brands

By Billy Yost

Kristen FitzPatrick doesn’t mind admitting that it took more than academics to fuel her success. With standardized testing and a curriculum that often seemed inapplicable, FitzPatrick looked forward to getting out of the classroom and engaged in something she loved.

“I always loved the idea of working in business,” says FitzPatrick, who is currently director of Dunkin’ insights and analytics. “Being a leader in business is never about getting to a singular standardized answer. It’s about being able to make and influence decisions quickly with limited sets of data and in the context of driving the overall business objectives. That appealed to me from day one.”

Sports taught a young FitzPatrick about building relationships, mentoring, and working toward shared goals. She enrolled in Northeastern University, which had a co-op program that allowed her to put her skills to immediate work, and the executiveto-be saw her previous academic struggles fall away.

The inspiring leader and mentor that FitzPatrick has become didn’t happen without some soul-searching. After achieving success in investment management, FitzPatrick realized that she wasn’t serving her true passion.

“I had a great job that I was really good at,” the director says. “Yet I was five years in, and something was missing. I didn’t have a true passion for the work or the industry I was in, and I knew if I was going to achieve

true success and fulfillment, that was a critical ingredient. I decided I needed to realign my career to my passions, which ultimately meant taking a step back.”

The dreaded “step backward” is an important inflection point for so many executives. FitzPatrick took on an in-house analyst role at Dunkin’ Brands, hoping that her own work could produce success for a beloved brand.

It’s the step that propelled FitzPatrick ahead through five promotions to her current role that occurred after the December 2020 Dunkin’ acquisition by Inspire Brands, whose portfolio of brands includes Arby’s, Sonic Drive-in, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Jimmy John’s. “From day one, everything clicked, and I knew right then that I was going to make a difference in the future of Dunkin’ and be fulfilled along the way.”

Over the past nine years, FitzPatrick has let her curiosity and passion run wild. She has worked diligently to evolve the Dunkin’ data analytics team from rudimentary Excel spreadsheets into a best-in-class insights and analytics department and the partner of choice to franchisees and stakeholders.

“We’ve built out a whole test-and-learn approach to ensure that as we’re testing and launching new products and initiatives, we are sure we’re putting out something that will work across our entire system,” she says. “When you’re talking about nine thousand [Dunkin’] stores across the country, you need to be confident that what you’re rolling out is going to fit more than just your core market and existing consumers. We’ve really helped ingrain that data-based mindset in all of our decision-makers.”

FitzPatrick says staying and growing through several roles has made sense to her because of the alignment of her core values: credibility, empathy, vulnerability, transparency, and partnership. It’s also clear that the company’s overarching

investment and belief in the power of analytics makes the insights and analytics team at Inspire the place to be for those looking to make a real impact on a massive scale.

“We have really enabled ourselves to build a team that has a seat at every decisionmaking table across the company, which is amazing,” FitzPatrick explains. “We’re here for our leadership team, and we’re also here for all other stakeholders if they need us. I always say that no area is too big or too small for us to share our analytical expertise and thought partnership to.”

As the director’s roles and responsibilities have increased, so too has her own investment in supporting the careers of women in data and analytics. FitzPatrick is continually inspired by someone who progressed her career from within: Kate Jaspon, CFO of Inspire Brands. “Kate demonstrates leadership that doesn’t forgo the unique values that we bring as women to these roles,” FitzPatrick says. “She is known as more than a CFO—she is an authentic, passionate, team player with a natural ability to cultivate relationships. To have that type of leadership coming from the top of such a large organization is a unique, inspiring, and powerful force.”

FitzPatrick says her own approach is about giving visibility to people who can accomplish great things and bring their own talents if given the chance.

“What too often is overlooked is the unique skill set and perspective that women inherently bring to the table that adds so much incremental value and competitive advantage, especially within the function of insights and analytics,” she explains. “Sometimes women just need a little more encouragement to be willing to stand up and actively seek out those opportunities rather than wait for someone to find them.”

It’s an exciting time to be at Inspire Brands. With a significant runway for growth

“We aren’t looked to for data. We’re looked to for insights.”

domestically and globally for its portfolio of brands, its departments and capabilities are rapidly expanding. Inspire’s data and insights team has almost unlimited space for creative problem solving and discovering new ideas and methods, so team members have the chance to build out the role for themselves and demonstrate their unique value in a department whose star is continuing to rise.

“We aren’t looked to for data,” FitzPatrick says. “We’re looked to for insights. There’s such an amazing chance here to grow your career with a company that spans across multiple brands and is heavily invested in the analytical space.”

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“Kristen FitzPatrick’s passion for driving the right decisions using the right data is evident. However, it is her strong core values that have made her successful and given her the opportunity to inspire others.”

“We have really enabled ourselves to build a team that has a seat at every decision-making table across the company.”

Kristen FitzPatrick Director of Dunkin’ Insights & Analytics Inspire Brands

DISRUPTING FROM WITHIN DISRUPTING FROM WITHIN

President and CEO

Angie Klein

Visible

Visible President and CEO Angie Klein leverages her extensive telecommunications experience to promote a new type of wireless brand

By Natalie Kochanov

Angie Klein may not have studied a technical discipline, but after twenty years in telecommunications, she knows her fair share about the industry. Her marketing expertise and experience across numerous business units at telecom company Verizon made her an ideal fit to lead the company’s digital wireless brand, Visible, which she has led as CEO since May 2021.

“My marketing background has allowed me to look at the telecom world through a different lens than some of my engineering or tech peers might. I’m trying to boil it down and tell a story that matters to the average person,” Klein says. “To me, Visible is as much a marketing brand as a tech brand.”

That perspective informs Klein’s approach to her new role as president and CEO. She seeks to bring her trademark attention to the customer experience to Visible and its members, digital natives looking to save money on their wireless plan without sacrificing network quality. The story at Visible is one of simplicity, but that’s exactly what makes the brand so disruptive. Considering her own penchant for disruption during her time at the larger Verizon, Klein is perfectly poised to take Visible to the next level.

“My voice has never been quiet, and I recognize when other voices, especially female voices, aren’t being heard. I am not afraid to call things out, so I try to amplify those voices.”

Laura Carson

Early on in her Verizon career, Klein had a chance to join the Fios team in the fiber-optic network’s start-up phase. During that time, she recognized her passion for challenging the industry status quo and her belief in centering customers in any business model. She went on to introduce disruptive ideas across her other roles at Verizon, through which she also gained broad exposure to the company.

“I’ve managed and left my mark on a lot of different parts of the business at all different life stages, from start-up to harvest to growth to renewal, with a focus on growth, scale, and disruption,” she says.

Most recently, Klein headed Verizon’s consumer segment marketing organization, where she developed and implemented the customer-inspired “Verizon Up” loyalty program and “Mix and Match” portfolio. “I had accountability for all of our value prop strategies across postpaid and prepaid as well as our home business, including Fios and fixed wireless,” she notes. “I’m extremely proud of that work, which is driving a lot of our revenue growth on the Verizon side now.”

Since moving over to the Visible side, Klein has focused on getting to know the brand, its team, and its members. Based on dozens of conversations with employees and members alike, she began to make changes like restructuring the organization to accommodate future growth, reframing workplace culture to emphasize the member and employee experience, and sharpening the brand mission.

“We are here to reimagine what wireless should be: radically simple, fundamentally accessible, and audaciously inclusive,” she explains. “We’re not trying to be all things to all people. We really want to focus on providing a simple digital experience and being the best at it.”

For Klein, being the best means responding to the wants and needs of Visible’s digital-native consumer base through offerings like “Party Pay,” a pricing structure with the benefits of a traditional wireless family plan but where members select their own groups. “Visible is really rendering the old ‘family plan’ obsolete,” Klein says. “Because we’re digital only, we can pass those savings on to our members, but we’re leveraging the ability of this beautiful network that Verizon has built. It’s a premium experience at a much lower rate.”

Visible’s mission aligns well with Klein’s nontechnical background, not to mention her prior experience leading in a disruptive environment. “A strength of mine has always been leaning into change and getting comfortable with adversity, but still understanding the financial implications of the decisions that we make,” she says. She credits her flexibility and openness to taking on new challenges as major contributors to her success.

Still, Klein remembers the people who helped her along the way. “I’ve had people recognize potential in me that I didn’t see in

myself,” she admits. “I sometimes think about how different my life would have been without those doors that someone else opened for me because they saw that potential.”

Such reflection pushes Klein to lift up others, whether at the office or in her community. She has served on the board of the Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York for the past nine years to ensure that girls and young women are aware of the paths available to them, and she forges lasting connections with junior colleague mentees. She uses her personal knowledge of mentees’ strengths to advise them, whether in the moment or years down the line—much as she herself continues to turn to her former bosses as sounding boards.

Klein feels particularly strongly about paving the way for her fellow women. “I’m acutely aware that there are not as many female CEOs in telecom as there should be,” she says. Even with Verizon’s wide-ranging support of women in the industry, she does her part by looking out for the women she personally leads. “My voice has never been quiet,” she says. “And I recognize when other voices, especially female voices, aren’t being heard. I am not afraid to call things out, so I try to amplify those voices.”

Just as it makes her a powerful advocate, Klein’s bold voice suits her status as an industry disruptor. It’s a part that she was born to play—and, in Visible, she may have found her greatest stage yet.

Thoughts from Guest Editor Christine Vanderpool

“Angie Klein is proof that being comfortable with the hard challenges and being able to face adversity straight on is a recipe for success. Even with her success, she takes time reflect on those who saw her potential and gave her opportunities.”

“We are here to reimagine what wireless should be: radically simple, fundamentally accessible, and audaciously inclusive. We’re not trying to be all things to all people. We really want to focus on providing a simple digital experience and being the best at it.”

CULTURE

How leaders cultivate inclusive environments that allow both employees and companies to thrive

Sheri Crosby Wheeler, Fossil Group P114

Kathy Neyman, Redstone Federal Credit Union P117

Stepping Up

By ZACH BALIVA

Ask Sheri Crosby Wheeler to explain her calling as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practitioner, and she’s likely to quote hip-hop. She’s a fan of the Pharcyde, whose refrain “I can’t keep running away” echoed in her mind at a key moment in her career.

Crosby Wheeler, who had been an employment attorney and litigator, was asked to build the DEI function at a leading mortgage company. But fear was holding her back. “There was a time when I was running away from my true calling,” she says. “I didn’t think I was strong enough, I didn’t think I knew enough, and I didn’t think I was worthy enough.”

Ultimately, Crosby Wheeler overcame her inner struggle and jumped headlong into a new career. Today, she works to embed

DEI into the fabric of the company at one of the nation’s top retail brands.

Crosby Wheeler joined Fossil Group in 2021 to help the well-known watch, wallet, jewelry, and accessory company build a more inclusive culture. During the interview process, Crosby Wheeler made her intentions clear: she wanted to drive meaningful change. “We’re not gonna settle for feel-good D&I. We’re gonna do real good D&I,” she quips.

Ironically, the personal struggles and nontraditional pathways that caused Crosby Wheeler to pause when considering a career change to DEI work actually make her the right person to do it. She was born in Texas and graduated from a small high school in a rural part of the Lone Star State.

When it came time to apply to college, Crosby Wheeler, who lacked guidance and

Scan the QR code to be taken to the web story.

As Fossil Group’s VP of D&I, Sheri Crosby Wheeler is on a mission to change corporate America in her sphere of influence and beyond and make room for those who have felt left out, left back, or left behind

Sheri Crosby Wheeler VP of Diversity & Inclusion Fossil Group

Kim Leeson

funds, applied to only two colleges. “I never heard of the concept of a ‘safety school,’” she says. She got into Emory University, but didn’t know what to expect. What she found was a world totally different from the one she grew up in, and after one year, she wound up on academic probation.

In what should have been her sophomore year, Crosby Wheeler dropped out and returned to El Paso. It turned out that without a degree, jobs were hard to come by, so she applied for a housekeeper position at a motel. The general manager saw Emory on her résumé and kind of shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “Emory’s great, but here you are—maybe you weren’t cut out for that particular school.”

Crosby Wheeler never forgot that experience, and says she instantly learned to honor and respect every person and every role. She calls cleaning rooms the hardest job she ever had, and now refuses to leave a hotel without tipping the housekeeping staff. But a few months in, she received some important news: all she had to do to get back into Emory was write a letter. She returned with a new focus, joined a sorority, made the dean’s list, and graduated with a degree in sociology.

Although the story has a happy ending, Crosby Wheeler’s resilience would continue to be tested. She got fired from her first job after finishing law school. Later, in the middle of a global recession, she walked away from another position that wasn’t a good fit. “I felt like I got knocked down a

couple times, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get back up,” she says. The experience gave her the grit and determination to weather even bigger challenges later in her career.

It also gave her the confidence to pivot away from a purely legal role after spending thirteen years as an employment attorney and litigator. Leaders at Mr. Cooper, a Dallasarea mortgage company, hired Crosby Wheeler to handle compliance matters and later gave her leadership over the government relations space. Finally, they asked her to do something else new: establish a diversity and inclusion function from the ground up.

At first, Crosby Wheeler hesitated. “I knew there were other people like me out there that just needed an opportunity,” she says. “Examining my own story helped me realize I was ready for the challenge.” She accepted.

Crosby Wheeler worked to transform the culture at Mr. Cooper from the inside and relied on employee input to create new policies, initiatives, and programs. In 2021, she learned about the opportunity at Fossil Group and jumped at the chance to recreate her success in the consumer space.

As she joins the $2 billion company, Crosby Wheeler is aware of both the opportunity to make an impact and the very real danger of burnout. “Trying to expose biases and change hearts and minds is not for the faint of heart,” she says.

Results aren’t immediate. Busy leaders often lack time to engage, and employees are susceptible to issue fatigue. Crosby

Wheeler plans to combat these issues by prioritizing self-care and networking with other DEI practitioners. She also believes that Fossil Group’s executive team has the sincere desire to advance equality and drive inclusivity.

That buy-in has helped her start off strong. In her first year, Crosby Wheeler elevated what Fossil Group already had in place. Thirty percent of its board positions are held by women, and 60 percent of its global workforce is female. New programs will help the company share DEI learning tools with global employees, lead in women’s empowerment, and develop more leaders from underrepresented groups by 2025.

Additionally, the company is promoting equal opportunity for all by coaching partners on equitable pay, providing meaningful grievance mechanisms to company and factory employees, and training women in developing countries about health and wellness. Fossil Group is also adding robust employee groups where colleagues can share their voices to help the business get better, improve the employee experience, and develop in their careers.

As Crosby Wheeler grows the DEI program at Fossil, she’s focused on one word: authenticity. She says her job is to patiently, slowly, and carefully embed diversity and inclusion into everything the company is already doing. The approach takes time, but it leads to “real good” D&I— and for Crosby Wheeler, there’s just no other kind that matters.

“We’re not gonna settle for feel-good D&I. We’re gonna do real good D&I.”

SHERI CROSBY WHEELER

By DONALD LIEBENSON

Kathy Neyman

Senior Assistant VP of Culture & Leadership Development

Redstone Federal Credit Union

Jeff White

There is a YouTube video that Kathy Neyman absolutely loves. As she describes it, the video opens on a man who walks out alone onto a field and starts moving, trying to get people to join in. “He dances alone for quite a while,” she says. “He’s that lone nut trying to get movement started. Finally, after several minutes, another person joins him, and soon, others follow.”

This video can serve as an apt encapsulation of what Neyman sees as her role with Redstone Federal Credit Union as senior assistant vice president of culture and leadership development. “I’m the lone nut,” she says with a laugh. “I’m the one who gets up there and says, ‘This is what needs to happen.’ The movement doesn’t really happen until others join in. When I see other people get passionate and engaged, I know our corporate culture can live on.”

Neyman defines culture as “the way we think and behave here: it’s the way we greet each other by name, it’s the way we show up at work, how we dress, how we make eye contact.”

She calls Redstone “one big family of 1,300 employees,” and it is her job to motivate and encourage people to be the best they can be both individually and as a member of a team moving ahead with a single purpose.

“During our time working with Kathy, we’ve witnessed her consistent commitment to Redstone and its 1,300 employees,” says

Ryan Millar, senior partner at Culture Partners. “Kathy has unleashed the power of culture at Redstone, and they’ve experienced phenomenal growth thanks to her leadership.”

Neyman was an influencer long before there was social media. She grew up fairly poor in Gadsden, Alabama, but she had high expectations for herself and others. “I grew up wanting to inspire people to be the best that they could be,” she says. “I like to see people achieve their potential.”

When she was around eight years old, she recalls, she would invite neighborhood kids to her house to sit in her little room, where she would preach to them. Tellingly, she was cheerleader in junior high and high school. She was in the honor society. But her family could not afford to send her to college.

She worked in retail for six years and put her faith in God to take control of her destiny. “I was committed to not living in poverty,” she says. “I knew if I worked hard, I could make something of myself.”

Neyman learned about an opening at Redstone from a friend who told her it was a place she could find a career. Despite not having a college degree, she was persistent in interviewing for the position. “After four visits, they hired me, and everything else is history,” she says. She has been with the company for thirty-nine years.

After one year at Redstone, Neyman moved up into management as a cashiering supervisor. Within seven, she had managed five different branch offices. In 1997,

she moved into a position in the training division. She found her niche. “I can be impactful not only to my peers but in coaching the executive team,” she says.

This year marks Redstone’s seventieth anniversary. With over six hundred thousand members, more than $7 billion in assets, and twenty-six branch locations in Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee, it is the largest credit union in Alabama.

Culture, Neyman emphasizes, is an integral part of Redstone’s success. “A weak culture will sabotage a strategic plan,” she explains. “A strong culture aligns an organization in the way it gets things done so it moves forward united.”

This was brought home to her during the pandemic. Going into 2020, she says, Redstone had surpassed its own benchmarks three years running. “We were knocking our goals out of the park and winning awards, including Credit Union of the Year,” she notes.

Thus, the company was well positioned when the pandemic began and the country was forced to shut down. “The impact on us as a credit union wasn’t so much from the perspective of getting things done,” Neyman says. “We were impacted in our ability to stay connected with each other.”

As a solution, Redstone instituted such programs as “Java and Jabber,” a periodic Zoom meeting for anyone who wanted to join and talk about things other than work, such as favorite movies or sharing new things they’ve done during the pandemic.

“When you start working with people and putting a name to what they’re good at, you see the light bulb come on.”

KATHY NEYMAN

CELEBRATING 70 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE

Neyman has a favorite quote by motivational speaker Brian Tracy: “Aspire greatly, for anything less than a commitment to excellence becomes acceptance of mediocrity. We were given talents to use, and we’re expected to use them to our utmost ability.”

This is at the core of her own personal mantra: BeTTY—Be Better Today Than Yesterday.

“If we can learn from the day before,” Neyman says, “whether we had successes or failures, we can be better today, and live today so we’re not filled with regret. This is what I try to instill in others.”

To that end, she says, she focuses on coaching to people’s strengths while managing their weaknesses. “Some people think they’re not good at anything,” she says. “When you start working with people and putting a name to what they’re good at, you see the light bulb come on, and all of a sudden they become a star performer in the credit union.”

Neyman counts herself as a leader who mostly prefers to stay in the background and let others shine. “I like to be recognized,” she says, “but I get a personal feeling of accomplishment by making a connection with other people over our culture, which ties together accountability, mission, vision, and values. What I really enjoy is when others I have helped become successful.”

One of Neyman’s mentors and Redstone’s president and CEO, Joe Newberry, once asked Neyman what legacy she wanted to leave at Redstone. It didn’t take long for her to respond, she says: “When I leave Redstone, I just want others to be able to say that in some small way, Redstone was a better place because of me.”

“A weak culture will sabotage a strategic plan.”

KATHY NEYMAN

Excellence is at the center of all we do. Redstone is ranked as one of the best credit unions in Alabama, and one of the top 100 financial institutions in the nation. Redstone is also a BTOES Global Award Winner, and was named Credit Union of the Year by NAFCU.

IMPACT

Leaders highlight successful outcomes of initiatives, whether within their companies or the communities they serve

Piloting IT through Growth

Spirit Airlines is on a mission to double in size every three to five years. Veteran CISO James Nolin unites people, processes, and technology to help the airline soar.

By ZACH BALIVA

Spirit Airlines is on the rise—and cybersecurity and information technology leader James Nolin leads the company’s world-class technology plan as chief information security officer.

The carrier has been growing for many years with no signs of slowing down. It all started in 2004, when the Florida-based company bought thirty-five new planes. By 2014, Spirit had cemented itself as a popular low-cost option. With profits up and fuel prices down, leaders introduced twentyeight new routes. Just three years later, they added twenty-one more destinations. In 2020, Spirit ordered 150 new Airbus jets.

Those working in IT and cybersecurity must embrace change and uncertainty. “It’s important for tech leaders to understand business, create a clear vision, and then be prepared for ambiguity,” Nolin explains.

He knows a thing or two about responding to unexpected events in difficult circumstances. Nolin was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean preparing to return home from active duty when his Navy captain received an urgent communication. The United States was joining a coalition to occupy an independent island nation near Venezuela. Nolin and his fellow sailors shifted into combat mode and became part of the invasion of Grenada.

James Nolin CISO

Spirit Airlines

Christian Lockerman

Nolin served in the US Navy for eight years, working on gas turbine systems. He intended to pursue a civilian career in mechanical engineering but switched to computer science at the behest of an

Upon graduation from Jacksonville State University, he earned industry certifications and worked up and down the eastern seaboard, first as an information systems manager and later as a senior engineer for GE Capital. As Nolin gained experience, he developed expertise in data networks and security solutions for clients in manufacturing, healthcare, education, government, and transportation.

In 2001, Nolin was sent to help a small Atlanta-based airline called AirTran Airways. The assignment, which was supposed to last just one week, turned into a yearlong contract. When the contract ended, Nolin accepted a full-time position and stayed with AirTran for more than twelve years. During that time, he led mission-critical IT activities, established a fully integrated call center, led a team that handled all trouble calls from a global company with more than nine thousand employees, and completed an MBA program at the University of Alabama.

By the time Southwest acquired AirTran in 2012, Nolin was ready for a new challenge. He ran IT operations for a few groups in other industries until a former AirTran colleague recruited him to Spirit. He joined in 2016 to eliminate recurring downtimes and ensure system-wide security so the airline could meet its lofty growth targets.

Nolin arrived on-scene as CEO Ben Baldanza was resigning. The board appointed an interim leader and announced plans for

CFO Ted Christie to take the number one job two years later. A renewed commitment to growth came with the succession plan and gave Nolin his mandate.

“Our new CEO wanted to prepare for rapid growth, and an airline can’t grow if its IT can’t stand up to growth in terms of people, processes, and applications,” Nolin says. “IT can’t be a roadblock to business.”

Spirit, however, had a small and outdated IT environment. Nolin had to consolidate all technologies into a data center, virtualize everything, and rebuild the back-end infrastructure to the website to accommodate an expected growth in users and traffic. In his first two years, these measures decreased unplanned system downtime from 3,500 to 100 minutes per month.

Several years ago, Nolin and his teams identified mobility as an emerging trend and knew customers and employees alike would need increased wireless and mobile options. Spirit’s IT team started to move away from large data centers and planned a massive cloud migration so their colleagues could work from anywhere in the world.

Nolin took Spirit to Microsoft Office 365 in 2017 and followed up by rolling out Sharepoint sites and introducing other collaboration tools. The outbreak of COVID-19 delayed the cloud migration project, but with the infrastructure in place, Spirit was able to pivot to a work-from-home model without missing a beat.

While other airlines struggled, Spirit saw limited interruption. Although planes were grounded, training, accounting, marketing, and other business activities continued. When travel bans were lifted, Spirit got back into the sky with relative ease. Now,

“It’s important for tech leaders to understand business, create a clear vision, and then be prepared for ambiguity.”

Nolin says his team has resumed the cloud migration, which he expects to complete by the end of 2021.

The era also gave Nolin a chance to demonstrate his ability to thrive in ambiguity. He helped move training, which was once done in-person, online and is emphasizing security. While a remote workforce brings some advantages and opportunities, IT leaders have less control over how users connect to networks. That means hackers and other bad actors have increased their attempts to break in and deploy ransomware or steal valuable personal information.

Nolin previously introduced company-wide quarterly phishing educational resources that took fail rates from 50 percent to .01 percent. Now, his team is further increasing security awareness training and implementing artificial intelligence security tools that pattern normal use cases and identify anomalies.

In the post-COVID era, Spirit is increasing its number of flights and outpacing earnings estimates. Nolin has a strong team in place to help him build and maintain the technology infrastructure that will protect, enable, and “future-proof” the business.

When the pandemic started, Spirit Airlines had 145 jets in the air. That number should grow to 230 before the end of 2023. From there, the sky’s the limit.

XR Technical Consulting adds value to client organizations by reducing technology expenses, increasing budgets and paving a strong, resilient IT path for growth. To get there, we leverage our relationships with more than 100 IT and telecom partnering vendors, negotiate contracts on your behalf, design and deploy the right networks for you, pinpoint and manage breaks in your system, and more.

Converge Technology Solutions Corp. is a softwareenabled IT & Cloud Solutions provider focused on delivering industry-leading solutions and services. Converge’s regional sales and services organizations deliver advanced analytics, cloud, and cybersecurity offerings. Converge supports these solutions with managed services, digital infrastructure, and talent expertise across all major IT vendors.

Passion Pays Off

A popular business maxim maintains that you “don’t change horses in midstream.” But Josh Griggs, executive vice president of talent and operations and CFO at Teach For America (TFA), did just that—and quite successfully.

By FREDERICK JERANT

“I was pursuing a degree in economics and international studies at Yale University when I started volunteering at schools in the New Haven area,” he says. Initially tutoring a single student one hour weekly, he was soon helping in kindergarten classrooms several days a week.

“I discovered that I had a passion for teaching, especially in low-income communities,” he says. “I even applied to be an intern in the public school system, so I could help link Yale’s resources with the system’s needs.”

After graduation, Griggs enrolled in the TFA corps program and was assigned to

Josh Griggs discovered a drive for teaching when volunteering at local schools. And now at Teach For America, his social impact goes far beyond the classroom.

teach third and fourth grade in the Bronx. During the second half of his two-year commitment, Griggs was chair of the fourthgrade program. He worked with a great team of teachers to develop a bridge-to-middleschool program and conducted workshops with school principals in New York.

When his two-year term ended, Griggs decided to join staff with TFA. “At first, I thought I’d use that time to sort out my options for grad school and settle on a career direction. But the staff at TFA really surprised me with their abilities and commitment to the mission,” he says. “I realized it was a place where I could learn and grow while making a real impact in the community.”

He joined the organization full time in 2005 (the same year he received his master’s degree in education from Fordham University) as director of recruitment, advanced through several positions in the admissions department, and was named to his current position in 2015.

“My time leading admissions gave me the chance to witness the criticality of partnerships and operational dimensions,” he says, “and so I became familiar with the whole enterprise, as well as the policies, processes, and systems that made it work.”

Currently, Griggs ensures that TFA has the proper (and sufficient) capabilities, policies, services, and systems to be simultaneously dynamic and stable.

Josh Griggs EVP of Talent & Operations and CFO Teach For America

“We need to think differently. The ways we did things for thirty years won’t work now.”

JOSH GRIGGS

OUR

PASSION IS HELPING OTHERS SUCCEED.

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That may sound contradictory, but it’s not. “Our ten-year goal is to double the number of students that reach key educational milestones indicating they are on a path to economic mobility and a life with more freedom and choices,” Griggs says.

To do so, “TFA must be able not only to quickly respond to opportunities as they arise,” he adds, “but also to consistently sustain the program and organization over those ten years.”

It’s a daunting set of challenges: organizing for the future, proper staffing flow, technology upgrades, real estate initiatives, and creating a stable backbone for the organization.

“We will need our talented and inspired people to work cross-functionally,” Griggs says. “We need to think differently. The ways we did things for thirty years won’t work now.”

by Ann Mei Chang. “We want to maximize our social impact over time,” he says, “so we need to innovate but in the proper ways.”

He mentions fundraising as an example. “While we’re examining our current sources, we may need to look at others,” he explains. “Who should be responsible for that? How do we decide where to apply those funds in order to have the greatest impact? How does it fit with our overall mission?”

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TFA’s use of real estate is an example. Pre-pandemic, office space agreements were a mix of five-year and annual leases. But after work-at-home became the norm, Griggs notes, the organization stopped renewing the annual leases and is now planning to take a totally different approach to workplace and office strategy going forward.

Griggs sees himself as a guide for others, not necessarily the typical leader. “The idea of servant leadership really resonates with me,” he says. “This position is not about me but about how I can be helpful to TFA’s staff, corps members, and alumni.” It’s why he takes a “walk the floor” approach, offering accessibility, prompt communication, and a willingness to collaborate.

Griggs follows the “think big but start small” philosophy espoused in Lean Impact

The “start small” aspect is evident in a recent pilot program. “We launched it with ten of our regions. Instead of relying on ten individual fundraising teams, we’ve consolidated them into three regional hubs, which will also work with the national TFA organization,” Griggs says. “We know what experience we want our donors to have and what results we hope to see, so we’ll collect data to understand whether it’s actually working. Then we can adjust or expand the approach as needed.”

Griggs’s passion for education hasn’t dimmed, and it aligns well with TFA’s overall mission. “The activities that we engage in, the programs we run, our partnerships with school districts and community leaders—at the end of a workday, I’m proud of how I’ve spent my time and am excited to tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead,” he says.

“The Plexus Groupe has collaborated with Josh Griggs and his team at Teach For America for over ten years. While advising TFA and Josh on their corporate insurance programs, we’ve built a successful, thriving partnership. Josh is professional and strategic and always makes decisions that are fiscally sound and supportive of TFA staff and culture.” –Bill Lacey, Partner, The Plexus Groupe

“I realized [TFA] was a place where I could learn and grow while making a real impact in the community.”

JOSH GRIGGS

How to Achieve an International M&A Deal Over Zoom

David Lancelot details the navigation of one of the most complex deals of the decade during the COVID-19 pandemic

By BILLY YOST

Former VP of Legal

David Lancelot

Adevinta

Christophe Testi

Throughout his career of building outstanding international legal functions, David Lancelot jokes that as a lawyer he was sometimes concerned that “the teacher was going to come check the work,” although that happens relatively infrequently. The former vice president and global head of legal at eBay Classifieds says that when the moment came for him, it was due to a $9.2 billion sale that would have to take place entirely remotely.

“I can’t imagine an international deal that big and that complex has ever been done this way before. We are talking about a deal that is approximately the sixth largest M&A deal globally in 2020 and 2021,” Lancelot says. When asked for any advice he has, he responds half-jokingly that “it would be to never do a major M&A deal during the height of a global viral pandemic. It was incredibly challenging, but we got it done.”

The lawyer and his team accomplished successfully navigating the break-off and sale of eBay Classifieds Group (eCG) to Adevinta during the darkest months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The complex deal deserves immense recognition given the team’s ability to navigate the obstacles of operating during a significant global crisis.

Up close, it’s a multibillion-dollar M&A deal with a lengthy sale-to-close period from September 2020 to June 2021, drawn out due to the regulatory approval needed from multiple countries where Adevinta and eBay Classifieds operate.

Taking a step back, the deal took place remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic,

necessitating eleven hours a day on Zoom for months and almost eliminating the casual chat time and relationship building that normally forms the foundation of such large deals.

“When you’re in-person for meetings, there’s the opportunity to just go grab a coffee together or have a drink at night,” Lancelot says. “This process was just a Zoom meeting followed by the next meeting, and it was hard to build those personal connections.”

Another step back provides the complex context for why the deal even happened in the first place. After activist hedge fund Elliott Management bought a $1.4 billion stake in eBay, Lancelot’s previous employer, the group pushed the company to sell off ticket resale company StubHub and eBay’s extensive classifieds business.

Lancelot was put in a peculiar position. Along with a large cross-functional team working to untangle the eBay Classifieds Group’s systems and technology that were deeply connected to its parent company, Lancelot had to simultaneously help prep the company for sale.

“It was an auction with multiple interested parties,” Lancelot explains. “So we had to run thorough, deep legal due diligence for multiple different companies at the same time.”

In short, Lancelot and the eCG legal team concurrently prepared for a sale to the potential buyers, who each underwent their own due diligence processes, while trying to accomplish the entire sale and untangling the company to be able to stand up on its own.

“I can’t imagine an international deal that big and that complex has ever been done this way before.”

DAVID LANCELOT

In many ways it’s a highly challenging M&A, but Lancelot, his team, and hundreds of internal stakeholders at eBay and many more external players pulled it off.

When Adevinta announced the successfully completed acquisition of eBay Classifieds Group in the summer of 2021, it provided Lancelot the opportunity to take stock of just how much he and his team had accomplished over the past few years.

“I am very glad that I had such a strong team who have been so conscientious at every level,” Lancelot says. “I work to build trust and a very strong esprit de corps, and I think it was valuable in going into what was a very challenging situation. It’s that spirit that really sustained the eCG legal team and the broader eCG business. I would never shirk on investing in that kind of culture.”

The lawyer has spent a great deal of time augmenting and refining his own leadership practices. He calls his philosophy a “self-actualization hierarchy” of sorts.

“It’s not about self-aggrandizement. It’s about the culture you’re building—based on an intentional vision and way of working as an outstanding in-house legal function. The culture’s North Star is to lift everyone

up and align their professional and personal goals with the business’s strategic goals,” Lancelot explains. “If you’re able to do that successfully, it drives authentic engagement where people are committed to the team and the businesses success.”

It’s an interesting moment for Lancelot, who has built out legal operations for eBay, Magex Ltd, and QVC UK, among others. While completing one of the most complex M&A deals of the year (or decade) should be thoroughly enjoyed, the attorney seems to want to get back to his real passion: building legal teams that can take on the world.

“The best thing in the world for me is seeing people really blossom and go on to do amazing things,” Lancelot says.

With twenty years of international leadership and the business acumen of a lawyer who understands how to best enable business, there are still big things on the horizon for Lancelot.

By once again proving he’s not confined to a time zone or a continent, Lancelot now has the ability to drive results everywhere.

Editor’s note: At the time of press, David Lancelot is no longer at Adevinta.

“I work to build trust and a very strong esprit de corps, and I think it was valuable in going into what was a very challenging situation.”

DAVID LANCELOT

Global Vision

Natura &Co’s Alexandre França unites diverse teams to help the cosmetics giant execute its plan to create the best beauty group for the world

By ZACH BALIVA

Natura &Co was already trading on Brazil’s Novo Mercado when it opened its first Parisian boutique in 2005, but only in 2013 did Natura &Co go truly global with the acquisition of cult Australian brand Aesop. Continuing to expand its global ambitions, Natura &Co later purchased the Body Shop, which firmly established its presence in the UK. Then in 2020, shortly after having started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Natura &Co added Avon to its portfolio and established customers in more than one hundred countries.

As Natura &Co commenced its dual listing in Brazil and the US and continued its

Scan the QR code to be taken to the web story.

Alexandre França VP, Chief Accounting Officer, and Global Controller Natura &Co

growth trajectory, the company needed a veteran finance trailblazer capable of motivating diverse teams and leading cross-border transactions in a more complex regulatory environment. They found that leader in Alexandre França.

França was born and raised in Brazil with significant exposure to American culture. He speaks fluent Portuguese, English, and Spanish. He has led complex accounting deals on three continents and has worked in senior leadership roles for a Big Four accounting firm as well as for the world’s largest company.

The Avon acquisition was finalized in January 2020 and turned Natura &Co the world’s fourth largest pure-play beauty group with four iconic purpose-driven brands that serve over 200 million consumers. The group has almost 4,000 retail stores, 40,000 employees, and close to $10 billion in gross revenue. França joined as vice president, chief accounting officer, and global controller just months after the Avon deal to manage the global controllership function and help guide business strategy.

In many ways, it was a role for which França had been preparing his whole life. He was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, and while França loves his homeland, he was determined to visit the United States to learn English. He got that chance as a sophomore in high school when he found

an exchange program that sent him to South Carolina.

Although he spoke no English when he arrived, everyone soon knew his name. That’s because França quickly made the school’s varsity soccer team. He made friends, learned the language, and fell in love with the culture. The semester ended, and França returned home knowing he would eventually be back.

While pursuing his finance degree, França started at Ernst & Young’s Brazilian headquarters in the audit practice. Any time the firm needed someone to be involved with US-based clients or have knowledge of US accounting rules, he volunteered.

“I was drawn to the US because of its more mature capital markets, and I saw it as a path to career development and future opportunities with large global companies,” he says, adding that he was looking to make a permanent move. By 2008, he had mastered accounting rules and financial reporting requirements in both countries, and the firm moved him to Houston, where he served large public companies before transferring to Boca Raton to work with clients in South Florida.

In 2013, França seized the opportunity to work for Walmart, the king of American business and the largest employer in the world. He moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, where he was responsible for complex

“I was drawn to the US because of its more mature capital markets, and I saw it as a path to career development and future opportunities with large global companies.”

ALEXANDRE FRANÇA

Experience makes the difference

global accounting processes. França started a family along the way, and after five years, they moved to Mexico so he could serve on a controllership leadership role in Walmart’s largest international market.

The vast global experience and financial leadership made França a perfect candidate for Natura &Co. “I was excited to join this company because it has a clear vision and wants to move forward in a very purposeful way that I know my skills can support,” he says. Natura &Co’s leaders have been vocal about their intent to use their scale and influence to address issues like climate change, drive diversity and inclusion, and support local communities.

In his role, França leads the transformation of the controllership function to ensure it supports the company’s strategy. He’s also building an accounting and finance function suitable for the “new” Natura &Co, which is now a public company in the US and in Brazil.

“The controllership function needs to be a key partner to the business and be able to spend more time analyzing the data than booking journal entries and manually inputting information,” França says.

He’s working to increase automation to transform and streamline what has been a manual department, and to capture the synergies of a global organization. He’s moved his family from Mexico City to London and continues to settle in while working on several exciting initiatives for the company.

França has worked with other leaders to recruit and hire talented finance professionals who are stationed in Brazil, London, and other key offices. He uses his background and experience to cast vision, unite people from different cultures, set goals, and deliver results.

Natura &Co shows no signs of slowing down, and with França and his team in place, the cosmetics giant is ready to continue its evolution to create the best beauty group for the world.

We at KPMG believe that talent, a holistic view of business, and the ability to combine experience and courage to innovate are essential aspects of a successful and truly transformative career. Congratulations on your career path and professional achievements, Alexandre França! —KPMG in Brazil

“The controllership function needs to be a key partner to the business and be able to spend more time analyzing the data than booking journal entries and manually inputting information.”

ALEXANDRE FRANÇA

When integrating business, a holistic view is a key element for success.

No wonder that at KPMG in Brazil, we are proud to recognize Alexandre França for his professional career.

Equity in Tech Equity in Tech

Like many industries, tech still faces gender inequality. In a 2021 survey by New View Strategies, one in three women in tech say they experience gender bias at their workplace. Dive into more insights to better understand women’s experience within the tech field.

TYINHIRING & CULTURE

PANDEMIC IMPACT

27% feel less optimistic about career than before pandemic

52% say workload has increased since pandemic

32% plan to leave their job within the next two years

REMOTE WORK

TOP DESIRABLE WORK PERKS

81%: Flexible work hours 74%: PTO

Working remotely

Paid maternity leave

401(k) matching

TRAINING IMPROVEMENTS

METHODOLOGY

BIGGEST INDUSTRY CHALLENGES

52%: Lack of advancement opportunities

Lack of female role models

Lack of mentorship

Lack of training resources

Pay gap

81% believe improvements need to be made at their organization

68% believe having more women on their team would be beneficial

1 in 10 experienced gender-based harassment over Slack or email

54% believe tech companies should offer specific training programs for women

VS

13% say their organization offers training specifically for women

One thousand women were surveyed, with the average age of respondents was 29. Work environment breakdown is 42 percent in-person, 26 percent fully remote, and 32 percent hybrid. Salary breakdown is 11 percent at less than $25,000; 38 percent at $25,000–$50,000; 43 percent at $50,000 to $100,000; and 8 percent at more than $100,000.

Source: getyournewview.com/tech-industry-gender-inequality