← DGTL Voices with Ed Marx
DGTL Voices with Ed Marx
Empowering the Next Generation of STEM Leaders (ft. Dr Laura Preitula)
00:25:57
Loading summary
Transcript60 lines
- [00:02]
A
Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast.
- [00:04]
B
Where we chat digital transformation challenges and.
- [00:08]
A
Opportunities across healthcare and life sciences.
- [00:12]
B
And now your host, Ed Marx. Hey, welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. And I'm with a friend of mine, Dr. Laura Pertula. Laura, welcome to Digital Voices.
- [00:26]
A
Oh, thank you so much. And I love being here. Thanks for inviting me, Ed.
- [00:30]
B
Yeah, we're going to have fun talking about women in leadership, leadership in general, different things that are of a particular passion of yours. But before we jump in, the most important question is what are the songs on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to?
- [00:45]
A
What a fun question. Thank you so much. I love all sorts of music. For the most part on my playlist, I have things like let's get loud from JLo.
- [00:56]
B
Yeah.
- [00:57]
A
One love from Bob Marley. And of recent ones like Lose Control, Teddy Swims. And then of course, I have some that are in Spanish from lady called Natalia la forcat. And it's like, Tu si sabes quereme. It's a really good song, too. But you'd be surprised to know that actually I love heavy metal, too. Oh, awesome. Yeah, I used to have, like, Motley Crue and, like, I wasn't mourning earlier this week because Ozzy Osbourne. Oh, my gosh. So. And I love a song from him. So sad. So in memory of him, for sure.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah, it's very, very tragic week in that sense. But, yeah, I was a big Ozzy fan from the beginning, you know, with Black Sabbath and then certainly in high school, you know, Ozzy went out on his own and of course, he had Randy Rhodes on guitar. And he died a very tragic early death. And I've been watching a lot of old concert footage, you know, of Ozzy in his heyday.
- [02:03]
A
Yeah.
- [02:04]
B
Yeah. And so you mentioned this Latina band. So is your background.
- [02:11]
A
Yeah, I'm born and raised in Mexico City, so I've only been here in the United States for about. About 30 years, more or less. Yeah.
- [02:22]
B
Wow. So, yeah, I want to jump into the story, but before we do, what's your life message or mantra? Are there. Is there a quote or sort of words that you live by? Or maybe it's an Ozzy Osbourne line or something?
- [02:33]
A
I don't know. No, I live. I live by something that I as. As a coach and mentor, you know, we create our personal purpose statements. And my personal purpose statement, it started as a bible, right. Like, really big and lengthy and everything. And I've been shortening and shortening, and in the end, I ended up with to love people. Just as simple as that, right? So for me, the greatest thing in this world is people. I love people. I like watching people, I like studying people. But more than anything, I love helping and supporting and servicing people. So for me, to love people is the greatest thing. And that, I would say, would be my mantra.
- [03:17]
B
I. I love that. That's. That's awesome. One of my kids married to someone who came from Mexico as well. So we're multicultural in many ways in our family. But I won't get into that because I want to hear more about you. Yeah, tell me, how did you go from Mexico City to the United States?
- [03:31]
A
Oh, well, I fell in love. So I'm a geek. Full on. Geek, nerd, weird, everything, you know, I am. I own it and I love it. And so I was organizing an international symposium for computer science, and my husband, now for over 30 years, was one of our guest speakers. So I met him and, you know, an usual tradition when it's Mexican, we had to date for a number of years and the families had to get to know each other and all this stuff, so. But I was already working in one of the top four consulting firms back then. And so I already had my country, my family, my friends, my work, everything. And, you know, I gave everything to just be with him because it was great and we still are strong and still going.
- [04:24]
B
Yeah, that's awesome. And did you have any children?
- [04:29]
A
Yeah, we have two kids, adults now, and they're both bilingual, I should say, actually trilingual. One of them also speaks French. And so, you know, one of the greatest things that my parents always said is that education is the only inheritance that nobody will ever be able to take away from you. And that's what we've been really focusing also with our kids and exposing them to various cultures, exposing them to various educations in topics academically or just creatively. Yeah, and so one of them really took into, like, languages and loves to explore cultures. And so. And the other is, is, you could say that he's multicultural in other ways in that, you know, this day and age, there's a lot of culture. And I'm saying culture in quotes. Yes, but there's a lot of culture online. And so my kids were born and raised in tech. You know, my husband is in tech, I'm in tech. So if I would have been a farmer, we would have been farmers. We would have been, you know, taking care of cows and sheep and everything, but we were not. And so we really taught them the beauties of computing and software. And all those things and they, they use it now as a tool. My son actually used to build a lot of servers when he was younger and so it's part of them. But the cultural aspect of it now online, he's gotten very much into that. That's the way that they grew up, right?
- [06:08]
B
Yeah, they're like digital natives. Yeah. That's why I was asking the question about kids, because I was wondering how you blended in with both cultures. And I'm a multicultural family as well. And so I was always like, very purposeful. Right. And them not losing their identity. You know, some of it's Indian, some of it's German and. Yeah, that's, that's very cool. So what was your primary catalyst to get into healthcare? So obviously you were tech, you were in Mexico, you're part of the big four, but you somehow got into healthcare. How did that happen?
- [06:38]
A
Well, actually both of my parents used to work at a hospital and I swore that I was never going to get into healthcare. Right. Because I'd see them, you know, one, my, my, my dad is a surgeon and my mom was in nuclear medicine lab, that type of stuff. And so I swore like, I'm never going to have that life. I know that's like super hard. And so my life actually started in supply chain. So I did a lot of supply chain development, software engineering type of things. And then I started into change management. And then I did cement, glass, steel, automobile. So it's manufacturing world. And then when Y2K came up and the world was going to come to an end. Right. That was a really good place for us to be in finance. And so because all the systems had to be revamped for that. And so it was a very, very good place to understand the way that the different people work and understand their own organizations, their own way of thinking. Finance was one. And because of that, we also said, well, you know, if finance is having that situation, healthcare's probably gonna do that as well. And I jumped into healthcare and I've loved it ever since. That was probably about 27 years ago and it's been great. And I've done private, I've done public, I've been contracting, I've been govy. So in every sector that I've been, I really have brought in a lot of who I am and what I've learned in the previous groups and the previous sectors. Even the way of doing just in time from supply chain, you can do it. You know, you do that in healthcare as well with all your, you know, your Pharmaceuticals or with your supplies that you need also even in the manufacturing flow or where you need to design how the pieces of the puzzle are going to be walking around or going. It's similar when you do it in workflows for people, right?
- [08:44]
B
Yeah, that's true. Well, you're, you, you have a great career. You're, you're a very sophisticated leader. You also have helped others quite a bit in leadership. How did you yourself become a leader? Do, do you look back at all and ever say these were like sort of the formations of who I became as a leader?
- [09:04]
A
Yeah, I think that a lot of it is my parents always allowed us to do whatever we wanted to do. And most important, I think is to always be curious. You know, when they ask you what's the one word that you would describe leadership as? And people are like, oh, change and adaptive and resiliency. I always come up with just curiosity. Yeah, right. If you're curious about stuff you're going to try, you're always going to be like, what about this? What if I do this? And so that really is one portion of the leadership aspect of it because. And nowadays you hear about agile, right. Fail fast, fail often, recover quickly. Right too as well. Well, but that's, you know, part of how I grew up. It's like, well, go on and look at it. Like, I remember clearly one time, well, many times that I would ask my, my parents, like, what does this word mean? And they'd say, you know, back then, the encyclopedias. Right. It's like, go over to those, those books over there and find the answer. Right. And so, so it's also being resourceful. You have to be curious, but you also need to make sure that you can be resourceful. Not because resources are brought to you, but because you need to be able to understand how can I solve my problem, what resources can I do. Right. Yeah. And then the other thing that has forever been part of me growing up is people and loving people and taking care of people. In Mexico, we are very traditional in the way that you respect your elders, you help your elders, but you also help the young ones. And so it's a lot of that community and making sure that the community is strong, because only as a strong community would you be able to really achieve great things. And so those would be like three main things, you know, that I've been using since I was young.
- [11:00]
B
Yeah. And they're working. And I imagine you and your husband have tried to instill some of the same things with your own kids.
- [11:07]
A
Absolutely. I Think that we've primarily focused on them being individuals, you know, because I know that I would have loved for my son or my daughter to be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And no, no, no, we. That was super difficult for us when they were growing up because we really wanted them to discover. We would guide them, but we really wanted them to discover who they are. And that's also part of leadership as well. Right. You have your teams, you have their strengths, and you know that you could probably do it better, but you need to guide them and then they can grow. So their growth will be beneficial for the community as well.
- [11:51]
B
Yeah. And it, and it makes sense from your answers, you know, why you always had sort of this advisory services. Right, Sheldon, Advisory services. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [12:02]
A
Oh, this is great. So Selden Advisory Services was brewed out of the need of. My husband does some consulting for some universities and design, instructional design and some other consulting. And so we wanted to set up something for him to be able to do that and working with executives on how to have executive presence. But more than executives at large, we're geeks. Right. And geeks, when you put us in front of people, sometimes we like just freeze and sometimes we don't know. So some of the stuff that he does is also have these workshops for IT people or for people that are not usually in the boardrooms. Right. For them, we have some. He's got some times that he's done that also for some nurses, some the healthcare space. So doing that. And so we said, okay, well if you're going to be doing this, we probably need to set up something. And we did that in 2016. And then based on that, I also added to that coaching and mentoring. So I created a framework where I blend those. In some cases, people just want coaching and some people, some just mentoring. But. But what I did, what I've been find, what I found out is that blending coaching and mentoring actually gives a lot to people when they're stuck as well. So I called it codering.
- [13:23]
B
I love that. Yeah, that's great. Makes a lot of sense. And you're also, you know, I introduced you as doctor. So tell us a little bit about your educational journey and why you went and pursued your doctorate.
- [13:36]
A
Well, I think I mentioned to you earlier that the only inheritance that I could ever keep and nobody can take away from me is my education. So we've been lifelong learners, my family, but also my brother and sister as well. And so I did my, my bachelor's degree. And then when I When I got married and came over here, I did my master's degree and then I had a little period of just going, doing some work and doing work. They, you know, you get some training, you grow. I was getting to a point in which I was no longer really learning much. I was contributing, I was giving some, some, some advice, but I was really not learning much. And so I decided, you know what, instead of just going to another place and try to get other training, I should look into something that I really would like to do to do a doctorate or a PhD. And I found this super cool program with Vanderbilt University that is leadership and learning in organizations. It's not just your, your a PhD where you're going to be doing research and you're going to be, it really is a doctorate where you're applying. And so we did a lot of ethnographic studies and it really pulled me because it was part of, you know, back to the people concept, right? Learning in organizations, leadership. And so I did that during the COVID years. So I had very little exposure to, to, to Vanderbilt, the, the, the, the university itself. But we were all online and so it went very well.
- [15:23]
B
Yeah, no, that's, that's great. And like you said, I think it'll be one of the key themes for us in our time together is that education is the only inheritance nobody can take from you.
- [15:34]
A
Yeah.
- [15:35]
B
Yeah, that's good. So I know that you have a big passion in stem empowering next gen leaders. How did this passion develop?
- [15:45]
A
Well, I'll tell you a story. Due to my role at work, we had a meeting and then everybody was paying attention to me in all regards and you know where you have the U shaped table and they put you in the middle and then you have like people who are sitting like on the wings because there's not enough room on the table, right. And so there was a person sitting there on one of those, next to the, to the, the walls. And at the end of the meeting, he came over and said, ma', Am, may I please talk with you? And I said, sure. And he said, I want to really thank you for inviting me to this meeting. And I was like, oh sure, you know, always, you can come. Just tell me there's no problem. And he goes, no, no, no, no. Thank you so much because now you've shown me what a person who looks like me can aspire to become. Right? And so, I mean, the little tear was falling, right? It's like, oh, but it was great. But really where all of this passion comes from is, and I'm going to go back to my parents. Right. Again, foundational is the family for me. And my, my dad had this super fun game that we played the game, but I didn't know that it wasn't a game. Right. But we just did. People watching. Right. In which we would go to a party and we would say, what do you think that the, the, the story for that group might be? Or what do you think they know? And we would start creating our own little stories of what happened. And so when you start really thinking about that and what people, who people really are and what do they dedicate their, their soul and, and their, their conversation, what do you think they're talking about? And he's like, you know, you really start trying to understand people and to, and to value them as a person. Right?
- [17:46]
B
Yeah.
- [17:46]
A
And so that's where I think that that passion was from way back when. And my parents have been, My, my dad comes from a very, very humble beginning and my mom comes from a very privileged life. And so the combination of both of them in our household was always a pull and a give in terms of, to, you know, well, if they're calling you to, you know, to go to see these patients, you should be charging them. And he would be like, no, because they're humble, they won't be able to afford me. I need to go and see them. And so it was this whole thing and it was more about don't focus as much as in, as, you know, how much you can get out of it, but how much can you give?
- [18:31]
B
Yeah, no, I love it. I want to, I would, I would have loved to have met your parents. Does it sound like really cool people? What can our peers. So you're a senior executive and, you know, a good portion of our listeners are senior executives. What can we all do to help others who are earlier in their career to advance? Like, like when you saw that person, that person came up to you and said, thanks for inviting me. You know, I, I, I see myself in you and it gives me vision and hope for the future. What, what can we do?
- [19:00]
A
Be open, like for that person. I was very open and said, look, I'm going to prioritize you if you want time with me, you know, so, so be open to others.
- [19:11]
B
Yeah.
- [19:13]
A
The more, the higher you get, the less time that you're going to have for others. And that should not be the case. Right. You should be always, always at the service of others. Especially the higher you get, the more people that you need to be serving.
- [19:28]
B
Yeah.
- [19:29]
A
That should be something that would be at the top of my life.
- [19:34]
B
Yeah, that's. That's great. Just taking some notes here of some of the things that you said. I like that about the higher you go in your career, the more people you should be focused on serving. And as we know, there's a lot of time pressures that force that could force that not to happen. So you have to be super intentional. What about young persons listening? So another good portion of our audience might be people in early career. And they see you, Dr. Laura, on the podcast with Ed. You know, what advice, Maybe one or two things that you have for them in terms of, you know, what they should be doing to prepare themselves for senior roles.
- [20:09]
A
So I would say, like we said before, be curious. Right?
- [20:13]
B
Yeah.
- [20:13]
A
Go out there and explore. There's some. I'll tell you a very quick story. I was in one of the sessions that I've had with some folks. They were afraid of going and going over there and talking with people or proposing a project. And I said, what's the worst thing that could happen?
- [20:30]
B
Right, right.
- [20:32]
A
That they say no, well, but I'll be embarrassed. You'll get over it. So explore. Go there. Right. I would say don't be afraid, but I'm more of a positive person. So instead of the don't be afraid, you know, I would like to go explore, do your what if. When my kids were little and they were like, no, no, no, I can't do this. And it's like, because what if this happens? And I said, yeah, be. Don't be afraid. Be prepared. And be, be aware and be prepared.
- [21:03]
B
Yeah.
- [21:04]
A
So now that you're aware, now prepare yourself and so run through your what if scenarios. Right. And as you're trying to get into leadership roles, you might fail. And that's okay. You need to know that that's okay. As long as you know that there's also an infrastructure for you to come up from that failure. Right. In many cases, leaders say, yeah, yeah, you can fail, fail often, fail fast, but there's no infrastructure for recovery from failure. So as a young person coming up, identify where that infrastructure for failure is available, because then you know that you can. Then you'll fail, you'll recover.
- [21:44]
B
Yeah, that's really powerful because there's a lot of really super smart people and because they don't explore for the reasons you cited, that gives hope, actually, to people like me who are maybe more average in intelligence, because I will be bold and explore and it'll open up doors that otherwise would not have been open to me. And so I think it's a great word that you're giving to the audience and that is, you know, go explore. Wherever you are, just explore.
- [22:17]
A
I'll also tell you something that I, that I tell many of the young folks that I coder, which is basically, opportunities are not given. I do not believe that opportunities are given. Opportunities are created and you create them with your work, with your connection, with your. But that's when you have to be bold, you have to be adventurous. Right. Because you have to be creating those opportunities for you, you know?
- [22:47]
B
Yeah.
- [22:48]
A
When you say, I, I just got this opportunity and thank you for giving me this opportunity. I don't give opportunities. I recognize the talent, I recognize things. Right.
- [22:58]
B
Yeah. Makes total sense. This is so fascinating. And we haven't even gotten to my questions around leadership. It's our time's running quickly out. But I think throughout the whole talk here, you've shared nothing but great ideas around leadership. Let me ask you this. How do you recharge your batteries and remain fresh? So, you know, a lot of times, if you're this go getter and you're curious and you're exploring and you're taking action and you're bold and adventurous, you also need time for yourself. And so how do you sort of recharge yourself?
- [23:31]
A
So I do a couple of things. One is I look for networks of people. I'm an extrovert. So for me, energy comes from other people. Right. So this right now for me is creating great energy. Right. My husband probably would be like dead after the session. Right? Yeah. But for me, this is great. But I do, I do try to get groups of people who are of like, mind, you know, because then you're not really focused on what am I going to say, are they going to like it? But then you can relax, you can be yourself and you can do all these things. So I found a couple of groups that are like that. One of them in particular that I really like, they do like retreats. And so I go to the retreats and I have to take time off to just unplug for everything and everything. Meaning your family as well. Right. So I just go on my own and I do the retreat that is just for me and that little community. But then also you have the things in which you have to. Not that you have to, but that because you're able to, you make time for your family and your loved ones as well. Because that's the other that recharging nobody can give you. Right?
- [24:47]
B
Yeah. This has been profound. I love your message. As I said, it resonated all the way down from how you were raised by your parents who obviously had a major influence, appropriately so, into how you lead today and raise up other leaders, especially in STEM and the next generation. So what did we miss? Or is there anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word.
- [25:11]
A
I like to say that you can make fear your superpower and that is focus on what you don't know, explore the unknown, act on the unknown and reintegrate that into your world. So that's fear as your superpower.
- [25:31]
B
I love it. That's a great way to end our episode. Thank you Laura for being on Digital Voices.
- [25:37]
A
Thank you Ed. Glad being here. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices podcast with Ed Martin. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review.
- [25:53]
B
And most importantly, thanks again for listening.