Lateral Leaps

You have said that very few careers take a direct and speedy path. So what was your own leadership journey like? What kinds of roles did you take on and what was the growth strategy behind learning to do all those different jobs?

Often when I hire technicians to come in and work in their lab, they're blown away to find out that my first job was their job. I literally began my career in the lab. And over the course of my career, I had the opportunity to move in many directions, many times, those weren't upward directions, by the way, to eventually have the opportunity to lead every function that we actually have in the company today. And so I was always open to learning. I think being a lifelong learner is really a great attribute for anyone. Because if you're truly focused on learning something new, then those doors that open that give you your opportunity to move sideways, take on a different business segment, learn a new market, it will grow you quite a bit. But if you're only focused on that upward mobility, you may end up hitting a rung in the ladder where that rung breaks and you kind of fall in the bottom because you forgot that you also have to round out your skills.