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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Resilience in Leadership & Stories From Youth 7-1-25
00:03:14
In this episode, Scott Becker shares how Holly Buckley’s early experiences shaped her into a standout leader known for resilience and determination.
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Scott Becker
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business podcast, the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Today's discussion is Resilience in Leadership and Stories from Youth. So. So today's star of the story, the protagonist is Holly Buckley and people that don't know Holly Buckley. Holly is a partner at McGuire Woods. She's the chair of the healthcare department at McGuire woods, which is one of the largest healthcare departments, legal departments in the world. Second career person. She had worked at Cerner before she worked at Met McGuire woods before she went to law school. And really a very smart, very gifted leader and gifted lawyer. The story that Holly tells recently is of her working and she's. The thing about that's messing with Holly. To give you a couple more stats really quickly, she came started college at 16 years old, which means she's incredibly smart. And on top of starting college at 16 years old, she immigrated from England with her parents in her youth. And just, you know, a fabulous story of, you know, how much the country gains from its immigrant community and how it's just a perfect example of that. She's just fantastic. And, you know, it's much better when you have these immigrants from the United Kingdom than the immigrants from Canada. The Canadians are much more challenging. I say that completely jokingly because one of Holly and my closest partners is a Canadian American who's got dual citizenship, I believe. But in any event, Holly, at one point in her youth was working part time at a grocery store and had to decorate American flags. Remember, she had just come over from England or Great Britain and somehow or another put the stars on the wrong side of the flag and didn't realize that that mattered. And so this was a sign. Howie, of course, got scolded for that. As a young person, she was working at a grocery store called Hy Vee. The beauty of Hy Vee is if you're in the Midwest, Hy Vee was one of the great, great grocery store chains. Still is. One of our other colleagues, Jessica Coles foundation father, spent his entire career as a leader at Hy Vee and just a fantastic personal leader. So the great story that comes from this and how he's rebounded from this mishap as a kid of decorating the flags the wrong way to be one of the greatest leaders I've had a chance to work with. But it's really a story of resilience and brilliance and greatness. She ended up coming out of this experience decorating the flags the wrong way and still rebounding from that, even though she was scolded into the great leaders I've had a chance to work with. And I guess what I take away from it is to an extent, resilience is so inherent in people. I wish it was so that you could teach resilience. And I'm sure for everything I say about somebody being born a certain way or wired a certain way, somebody else would correct me and say that's wrong, then I'm wrong about it. But. But how he seems to have this lifelong resilience and leadership ability that it seems to me is almost unteachable. Again, that's the story of Howie Buckley and Hy Vee of resilience, determination and leadership. An amazingly gifted person. It was just a small, small example, but I think it's worthy of learning because it's just a teachable moment and somebody who's got this incredible ability to be resilient and to win and to keep on winning. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We are always looking for suggestions at 773-766-5322. Thank you so much for listening.