← The Leadership Dance
The Leadership Dance
Ep. 8: Transforming industries and teams, with Sue Siegel
00:54:04
Sue Siegel is one of those people who makes a lasting impact. From her pioneering work at Affymetrix during the early days of the Human Genome Project, to her visionary influence in driving innovation at GE and other companies, Sue has left an...
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- [00:02]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Hi and welcome back to the Leadership Dance. I'm Alisa sue lynch and my guest today is Sue Siegel. Sue is a board director, former CEO and VC in the life sciences industry. With over 30 years of experience, she has served on more than 20 public and private corporate boards, including Align Technology, Illumina, Nevro Corporation, kff, formerly the Kaiser Family foundation, and is Chair of the board of MIT's the Engine. She was named among the NACD Directorship 100 in 2023 and 2024. Her career highlights include roles as GE's Chief Innovation Officer, CEO of GE Ventures and Licensing, and CEO of Health Imagination. Previously, she was a VC General Partner at Moore Davidow Ventures and led Affymetrics during the early days of the Human Genome Project. A senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management, sue is recognized as a leader shaping healthcare and innovation, earning accolades like Fortune's 34 leaders changing healthcare, one of the most influential women in Silicon Valley, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Global Corporate Venture. She is also a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, which is how sue and I met each other. Welcome to the podcast, Sue.
- [01:23]
Sue Siegel
I am thrilled to be here. Elisa. Thank you very much for inviting me.
- [01:27]
Alisa Sue Lynch
So you were born in the Philippines and grew up in Puerto Rico. Tell us what your upbringing was like and how did your cultural background and values influence how you approached your career? What did you dream of becoming when you were younger?
- [01:41]
Sue Siegel
I like to say the following, which is I have roots in the Philippines, shoots in Puerto Rico, but boots in the US and as an immigrant, I had exposure to so many different cultures very early on in my life and it really helped fuel my natural curiosity. It also helped me to become adaptable and really resilient. I had to learn to adapt to new places. We moved quite a bit and as you might imagine, I'm a short Asian. I have a last name like Seagull in Puerto Rico. And typically when you're in Puerto Rico, I you have Garcia or Rodriguez or, you know, Gonzalez. I didn't fit any of that. So it was more like the song One of these Things is not like the other. And but I had to learn to embrace that I was different. And when I would have identity crises, I have to tell you, my mom would say in her only mom way is you are a citizen of the world. I actually it was a good thing to learn early on to be okay with being different from the crowd. And it's been a constant throughout my life. Now one thing I'll say, you know, you asked the question that how did your youth sort of shape you? I played sports. Basketball? Yes, I played basketball, despite being four. Allows it. Yeah. And volleyball. And you name the sport, I loved it. And that helped me find a niche where I could excel and also helped me realize very early on that I loved being part of a team. And I also realized that I enjoyed being a leader because it gave me an early taste of what it was to coach others, which is something to this day I just love doing now. My parents really helped shape me. They were hardworking, intellectually minded professors in science. Both were Yalies. My, my dad did his graduate degree in physical chemistry and my mom did hers in forestry and she taught chemistry and physics. And you know, they encouraged me throughout my youth to pursue the sciences and become an academic just like them, maybe a medical doctor, but they loved teaching and they felt that it was the most noble of professions that you could possibly have. So I followed their advice. I went into the sciences. I did my graduate degree in molecular biology and biochemistry. And you know, one night when I was working in the lab, it was like 2:00 in the morning and I found myself asking a question, what am I doing here? I was in my mid-20s and fortunately I realized it then that becoming an academic wasn't my passion. And luckily and very coincidentally, after having that epiphany, a business person came into my lab very shortly after and he asked me, have you ever considered being in business? And I. So he looked at me and said, well, what's business? I mean, I had no idea what that question meant because that was never part of the vocabulary in my house. Anyway, he invited me to come out to interview at a company called Bio Rad, offered me the role and I accepted. And I fell in love with business, became obsessed with it. To be frank, I've never looked back.
- [04:59]
Alisa Sue Lynch
And how did your parents react, having both been scientists?
- [05:03]
Sue Siegel
When I called home to, to tell them that I was going to go into business, my father was very gracious about it. And my mother, on the other hand, as only mothers can do, was not so happy about it. She didn't say anything. She's over it now. Took me about 20 years to show that it was okay. But, you know, she really wanted me to do well in the world of, you know, academics. But I think, you know, now I teach at mit, so maybe to a certain extent it satisfied a little bit of her desire for me to teach others.
- [05:37]
Alisa Sue Lynch
And what language did your parents speak? I was curious, are you multilingual?
- [05:41]
Sue Siegel
So my father was Haitian born with a German father, Otto Siegel, hence my last name. And his mother is French. Georges Gentile. My mother is Filipino born and her mother is part Chinese and her father is part Spanish. So when they met at Yale, they ended up speaking in English together while they were at Yale. But really, because I grew up in Puerto Rico, the languages we spoke at home were French, Spanish, and then of course a little bit of English. But I got educated in Spanish. So my emotions when I'm quite passionate about something, they come out in Spanish. And I think when I'm angry, oh my goodness, it's caramba. Along with a bunch of other words. I tend to express myself much more so in the Latin terms.
- [06:30]
Alisa Sue Lynch
That's great. Yeah, because my parents are from China originally and my sister and I were born in the United States and so we didn't really speak Mandarin in the home. My parents spoke to each other but didn't speak to the kids because my sister was teased when she started school in the US So my parents decided to just speak English to us. But I learned Chinese in college and then lived for a little while in China. And it just was never. I never thought in Chinese. It was always a translation in my head. So that's why I was curious if you consider yourself multilingual, and it sounds like you are.
- [07:03]
Sue Siegel
I mean, now I've been speaking English as long as I've been speaking other languages and I speak English all the time. But I have to say, again, the cultural leanings, when I'm just this morning, when I have background music, I have, you know, sansai merengue and all of those sort of Latin music playing in the background because it helps me think. And when I'm angry, it is Latino all the way through. Which is a great way to be emotional because, you know, the Latin community tends to be very passionate about things.
- [07:39]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yes, yes. So you describe yourself over your 30 year career as having been an operator, an innovator, a VC investor, a board member of industry changing companies. Tell us more about your career and the transitions and what led you to where you are today.
- [07:56]
Sue Siegel
Well, I've had a four year career. It's hard for me to believe that it's been that long, but that is the case. And, you know, I get asked a lot of times, did you plan your career? And if you look at my weaving path, that's the last thing I actually did. I mean, so apropos for this podcast in terms of leadership dance, the choreography was just. I can't say that I choreographed it. It happened I had the chance to experience and do so many different role roles. And you mentioned them, right? I was an operator for many, many years. I was a CEO, a venture capitalist. I was in the Fortune 10C suite as an executive. I'm a board member. So many different things. And I teach too. And that goes to this notion of curiosity and adaptability. I learned the ropes in business in a series of life science companies with sciences really at their core. And over the years I was offered expanding roles and responsibilities and I got promoted along the way. And these were companies like Bio Rad, dupont, Amersham. And I moved along quickly, partially because doors opened. And when doors opened, I walked through them. I bet on myself and I trusted that there would be people along the way that that would be willing to help me, to help me learn. And there were, you know, from Amersham, I was tapped to be chief commercial officer at a company called Affymetrix. This was an exciting Silicon Valley company that was an early mover in the genomics industry. And this was at a time when the human genome was just being sequenced. And remember, you know, we talk about the moon being explored, we talk about the seas being navigated, but yet a territory that we did not know about was our own human genome. It was a terrain that was undiscovered and we never had the tools to actually understand it. And along comes this company called Affymetrics and provided a tool set that allowed us to study our genetics in a massively parallel way. You could only in the past study it one gene at a time. Now you could study it thousands genes at a time. And at one point the whole human genome was able to be studied. So I went on to become president of this company and a board member, grew it to become a multi billion dollar market cap company. And here you are leading a publicly listed company and with all that entails. I learned so much, Elisa. I mean so much. Investor management, conference calls, managing a board. It was really incredible stuff. But beyond the leadership challenges of Affymetrix, I have to tell you, I also learned we were in the midst of this new emerging industry, genomics. It was something that people hadn't really thought about. And we were in the midst of all of these really serious bioethical questions at the time. Things like who owns your genome? Other things like can you create designer babies? And you know, at the time that I was hired, Gattaca was actually the movie du jour. So it was just a very incredible time where I realized not only did you have leadership responsibilities within the companies and to your shareholders. But frankly, you had responsibility for the greater societal impact that the kind of tool sets that you were providing, the kind of products that you were providing, actually affected others in society. So we had to take a leadership position on a number of different things. For example, we worked on the Genetic Information Non Discrimination act to make sure that you can't be discriminated against using your genetics for healthcare insurance or for being hired in an employment role. We also took the position that naturally occurring genomes, gene sequences, something that occurs in nature, should not be patentable. In the past, they were patentable and you can imagine you'd have to get a license to study any of the genetics or genes that were part of disease. It was just one of these times where it was so formative for an industry that we had to also forge the way with the community, learning our way through it. The good news is, I think for the most part we came out on the right side of many of the decisions and it was such a formative time for both the industry, for the company and frankly for me. I'm so grateful for the experience because it was incredible. I was at Affymetrics for almost eight years when I left afy, I call it afy. I got this call first, an email and it was from a legendary biotech venture capitalist. His name is Brook Byer, is very well known here in Silicon Valley. He's the Clyer Perkins Caufield and buyers of that, of that firm. And he wanted a coffee chat. And one of the things he asked me during that coffee chat was have you ever considered being in Ventures? And again, just like my first conversation in the lab, I was like, what does ventures mean? Because I really didn't understand at the time what that really entailed. So again another door opened. I walked through that one and I became a general partner at Silicon Valley based more David Al Ventures. I led investments in personalized medicine, life sciences, healthcare. And I worked, worked there until I was recruited by GE to lead Health Imagination and to create and start GE Ventures, which was the corporate VC arm for the company. That was another heady experience because here I am at this big, big venerable company, an innovative company. It was known from the Thomas Edison's day. It was just baked into its DNA and I was being tapped as an innovator to come help it go through a next evolution of innovation, not just in terms of producing innovative products, but frankly innovation culture. And that was a huge learning. Lisa it was a ride to say the least. And Then I moved into portfolio life, which I can tell you a little bit more about.
- [13:47]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah, I definitely want to come back to that. So just going back to your time at Affy or Affymetrics, the genomics industry has changed so much, and that must have been so exciting for you to be in at the beginning. I mean, just a couple of things, like, what are your thoughts on where the industry is today? So now AI is being applied and can accelerate the discovery of new drugs. And then we have like 23andMe that's maybe going bankrupt, going out of business. Like, what's happening to all that data? What are your thoughts on what's happening in genomics today?
- [14:19]
Sue Siegel
Genomics is in the process of continuing to transform. It went from a company that was learning what the basic molecular level of our DNA was, not just human DNA, but any organism in the world, to now having a treasure trove of data of all of these organisms. Every species that you can possibly imagine, but multiples of those species. So when you think about AI, which you asked about, what does AI thrive on? Data. And there has been such an accumulation of data over the years because of next generation sequencing and the kind of tools that Affymetrics provide, that now is a time to mine. Now is the time to potentially change how the trajectory of potentially new drugs or diagnostics can be brought to market. So we all know it takes 13 years and billions of dollars to launch new drugs. The discovery of those lead compounds typically would take a lot of money, a lot of time. Now, with all the data that actually exists, you apply AI to that large language models and all of the algorithms and tool sets that you have to that world, there's lots of hope. And you're starting to see that, in fact, it's going to cut down the amount of time it takes to actually discover new possibilities of new lead compounds. And then the same thing in diagnostics and what the possibilities are in terms of biomarker discovery. When you think about the industry, it used to be about purely discovery, now it's about application. Now it's about taking those biomarkers that have been discovered in the past and turning them into useful types of kits so they can be either companion diagnostics, so you can test somebody and provide the right drug to the right person at the right time, or you can test somebody and find out whether they have early predisposition for a cancer or another type of disease because of the richness of the biomarker data that now exists. And that AI is only going to help make better and produce so much more of. So it's a real time of application versus discovery. You will always continue to discover, but now we can also apply. And with application comes true value creation. And I think you're going to see a tremendous amount of productivity enhancement that's going to occur in the larger companies that have really utilized genomics, like the pharma companies in their work, but also new genomic players that are both early biotechs, but also molecular diagnostics companies. It's an incredible time in genomics.
- [17:01]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah, it really is very exciting. And I think the medical discoveries and the breakthroughs and hopefully new cures that we're going to see are going to make people really believe in AI because I think there's a lot of fear as well.
- [17:14]
Sue Siegel
Yeah, and you said it. Actually, it's also a time where we're moving into curative versus purely treating chronic diseases. You're seeing, for example, Casgevy and Lithgenia, which are treating the sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemias that Vertex and Blackbird Bio have brought to the market. And the FDA has proved, and these are drugs or therapies that AI was applied to too. But they're not just treating chronically, where you're taking a pill every day or once a week or whatever, that the timeframes for therapy are much more elongated. And there is a belief that with CAR T cells, et cetera, we're going to get to curative also on a go forward basis. So I'm very excited with the possibilities of cell therapy and regenerative medicine.
- [18:04]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that day. So, sue, another thing I wanted to touch on which you brought to life is that people are so multidimensional. So we each have so many stories, layers, identities that make up who we are. And in addition to your many professional accomplishments, you're also a woman, an Asian American, a wife, a mentor, a philanthropist, and I learned recently, an avid pickleball player. And you are too. Yes, yes. So I'd love to talk more about pickleball. No, I'm just kidding. Actually, what I wanted to talk about is let's talk about the concept of authenticity and what that means to you. So did you ever feel like you couldn't bring your full self to work?
- [18:51]
Sue Siegel
That's a multi layered question, Lisa. First of all, authenticity to me means being really comfortable in your own skin. No matter what environment you're in, you have to show up as you live by your values. And in my view, life is too short to Put yourself in circumstances where you can't be your full self. Now I'm curious. I love to laugh. I'm interested in people and helping them succeed, unlock their full potential. That's what really fuels me. Let's face it, it's been hard for me in many ways to hide. I'm Asian American, I'm a. I'm short and in business, I've spent my career being surrounded by tall men and frankly, mostly white. So you and I both stand out in that sense, or part of that crowd per se. But I really did believe that it was important to be myself and be essential about what I brought to work. So I have to say the following, which is, in this day and time, it can be tricky to bring your full self to work. Right. There might be times where it's inappropriate to talk about politics or religion or personal beliefs because our social norms really are such that you're very careful about that. And I have come to believe that they can be so polarizing and you can make others uncomfortable. So as a leader, it is incumbent upon one to be careful how you present your ideas, how you talk about certain belief sets that you have so that you're not imposing or that you're making people so uncomfortable they just don't want to be around you. I'm a woman of faith, but I have to be mindful and respectful of others who might not be of the same beliefs. And so I think that empathetic leaders understand and you find ways to communicate and live how you want to live and you figure out ways to bridge that divide.
- [21:04]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah, I agree. It's definitely nuanced in terms of just being your yourself at the expense of all others. You know, that's not the right approach either. You know, you want others to also feel comfortable so that. That's a tricky balance to achieve.
- [21:17]
Sue Siegel
It is. And, and, and it's that notion of you can do and say whatever you'd like. I mean, that's sort of why we live in the US in so many different ways. But in the work setting, there are certain rules that you abide by, and they're written into the code of conducts of most companies, so you have to be respectful of those. But even if you didn't have that, you and I both know that in all order for others to feel comfortable, to be successful as leaders, we must be mindful of what we say and how we say it and ask them to express their thoughts versus only sharing our thoughts. And I think, particularly in these very delicate times, that we're currently living in and we're surrounded by this macro environment where so much is said on social. I think respect is one of the number one values that we need to have. And I respect myself and I'll respect others by being careful about how I want to share certain things so that people can feel comfortable to know that I'm open to hearing their things too.
- [22:25]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Do you feel like then you're hiding parts of yourself?
- [22:29]
Sue Siegel
I think they know through my values and how I act that it's me, it's authentically me. But what I say and how I absolutely am going to want to tell them, you know, exactly what I'm thinking in the moment. I think we have to temper that a little bit because not everyone will understand your intention. You want them to, but how many times have you been misunderstood, no matter how hard you tried? So I've come to believe. And part of being authentically me is being respectful of those differences and understanding that communications is key in figuring out how to do it. So that you're not imposing, but you're sharing. And that's how I tend to want to show up.
- [23:14]
Alisa Sue Lynch
So that's a great segue to talking about teams, which I think you brought up before, but you're really known for building innovative teams and that's something that you were tasked with doing as CEO of GE Ventures and as Chief Innovation Officer at ge, which is historically known as being a little bit more conservative or strict in my mind. Tell us about your approach to building teams and how did you do that in a culture that maybe wasn't as focused on innovation, which was your primary goal.
- [23:46]
Sue Siegel
So the culture of GE was truly innovative. I mean, I don't know how to describe this, but because Thomas Edison was like the master innovator, that was just part of the culture of ge. GE developed both as an innovative company, but it also became this rigorous discipline, Six Sigma kind of culture that in essence took variability out of the equation. That match or mismatch at times of innovation with Six Sigma sometimes could clash. So I was brought into the company particularly to get GE much more connected to the Silicon Valley and Boston based communities where innovation is just part of the fabric of both of those areas. I came in and I quickly realized that a lot of times these incredibly smart people that were there who had been very successful wouldn't necessarily understand what I was saying or didn't agree with the way I was going about it because remember, I'm coming out of the Ventures community. So you have this rigor based operational culture with this venture based future looking kind of culture that I was bringing in along with the team that we were building. And I hired a number of venture capitalists to join in this effort and they were from Silicon Valley or they were from Boston and they were used to give you one example. And you know what I'm talking about here, Elisa. When I say to you it is in GE or in J and J or in Google, you tend to have a budget, you get an annual budget and you run against that budget for the year. Well, I was coming in from venture backed milestone based financing where you would say, I'm going to give you the following milestones, I'm going to hit those milestones and it's going to take this much capital in order to do that. And that might be a quarter, that might be six months, it might be a year. You tried to operate within the year budget, but the milestones were different and that's what you operated to. And the difference too is this notion of if you didn't meet it, a lot of times the funding would get cut out in the annual budget. You have the year to essentially make the goal. This was forcing the issue of quickness, of really being clear as to what you were trying to achieve. So we brought in these VCs from Silicon Valley in Boston. We married it to this culture of discipline and executional rigor that was all of GE and in so many different ways it was very ambidextrous, dexterous team. And I learned something while I was there and that is having this mix of talent. I needed the venture capitalists to essentially provoke, to always be future looking, to always be scouts, to understand new business models, new technologies, the competitive landscape. And GE and the folks at ge, we needed them for their rigor and we needed them to understand the system of GE so that we could fit into that system and not completely break the system, but help it become more nimble and to become more embracing of risk taking and being able to fail faster. And that this notion of failure was about learning and productive learning versus a notion of failure so that you're not successful. So there was a lot of different cultural tensions at the beginning, but more and more over time we were showing that we could produce, that we could deliver and it became more accepted in terms of the kind of things we brought into the culture. And the team that I feel so privileged to have worked with and feel very proud of. What we did there was just incredible. They were an ultra high performing team. I loved watching them do what they did each of the business units over time wanted each of them in their respective area, be it GE Aviation or be it GE Energy or GE Healthcare. They wanted their respective venture capitalist to in essence, sit in their strategy meetings because they could see the amount of richness that they bought to that discussion, the amount of provocation that they were bringing to the discussion. So it wasn't just the way it's been done in the past, but we're going to try new business models and instead of just being an asset sale, you might have a subscription model or you might have some other way to go about making revenue. So it was a very, very heady time, a challenging time for GE because we went through all sorts of difficulties at Georgia. But you know, I learned so much and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
- [28:35]
Alisa Sue Lynch
So, Sue, I want to pick up on something because you mentioned that the team that you built at GE was just a high performing team. How did you build that team to be that team that just performed so well?
- [28:47]
Sue Siegel
You know, one of the things that I have are a set of leadership principles. And I try to abide by those. And I'll give you a couple of examples. I'm not going to tell you all of them. But for example, seek impact, not glory. I live by that. You know, seek respect, not popularity. Things like seek to include versus exclude. And you know, Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican writer, he said when we exclude, we betray ourselves. When we include, we find ourselves. So it just gives you a few of my leadership principles. And you know, the other one is nurture, excellence. And I can go into that forever. But one thing I do with teams, and this is something that I so believed in way back when, when I first became a manager back in the 1980s, I sat down and when I was told that I was going to become a manager and have this team, I asked myself, what did I like in the managers I had and what did I not like in the managers I had and what would I expect from myself? And so I went about crafting a behavioral framework and I call it Ways of Working. And I've used this now since the late 80s and I've used it with every team that I've participated in. And I'm just going to give you a sense of what that's all about. And it's five principles. The first one is we are all ambassadors to the team. You define the team. It can be the company, it can be your department, it can be your small group of people. Your actions reflect on the team. And one of the Principles that I absolutely insisted upon is that the support of your team members is just a must. So we are all ambassadors for the team. The second principle was all around issues within the team should be resolved within the team. Don't go air your dirty laundry outside of the team environment. All you're going to do is undermine the effectiveness of that particular team. This one is really important to me and this is decision solutions supported once made. How many times does it happen when you make a decision and then you leave the room and immediately people start second guessing it or say they didn't believe that it was the right decision? I absolutely said to people on my team that can't happen. You have the right to come in here, debate vociferously. You can argue all you want and give us fact based elements around why you don't believe in a certain position and we can debate it, but we are going to get to a decision and once we've made that decision, it is on to crisp execution. And it is not about second guessing. And we hold each other accountable for this. And people would hold me accountable to this. We would call them out very respectfully. But we would say once a decision is made, you don't second guess that decision. Now, sometimes it was the wrong decision. And I would say the following. You have the chance to bring it back into the team and you can't just come in and say I think it was the wrong decision and not come in with some type of thought process or potential solution that you'd want to discuss. The fourth one is proactive problem management. And this one is you have a problem. A lot of times you think of Mindy did this instead of going to your manager or going to her manager and complaining about da da da, Mindy did this. The most respectful thing you can do is find a way to go to Mindy and say, I'd like to discuss something with you and I want to do it in the most respectful way possible. It's amazing what happens because and certainly in the teams that I worked with over time they learned to do this and it made for such a better working environment. And then there's another thing I will say and that is you can declare venting zones like five minute venting zones because it's not all apple pie, right? And you want to be able to vent, but you only get a limited amount of time, three to five minutes. The last one that I used all the time was assume noble intent. I use that in my life all the time. It's amazing what happens when you assume noble intent, when someone's coming to you, how many times have you thought, oh, they're going to come and da, da, da, change your mindset and say, oh, they're coming with a solution, put a smile on your face. And so many times it's happened to me that what I might have assumed at first when I changed my mindset helped me get through being able to find a mutually beneficial solution. And this ways of working, I mean, every company has vision and values and mission, but this ways of working for me was all about a behavioral framework that has worked over and over and over again. And it's just been extraordinary how communicating back to my mom, communicating a framework helps people understand expectations regarding behaviors. Not just values, but actual behaviors.
- [33:48]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Thank you for sharing that. And I'm hearing as a theme, sue, that you love being this change agent and coming in, whether it be an industry that's developing or a culture that needs developing. You're really good at shaping that and figuring things out when maybe it's not as clear. And that can be really difficult for a lot of people. But you sound like that's one of your superpowers.
- [34:15]
Sue Siegel
Yeah, I never really thought of it that way. But I have to say that ambiguity is okay and I'm up for a challenge. And so you put ambiguity and the notion that you have to deliver. And I love delivering. But I will tell you, at the core of everything is team. I fundamentally believe that without team and without the people, you can't do anything. I mean, I'll go to war with an excellent team any day and relatively okay technology, you give me that versus great technology and a sort of okay team. I pick the first all the time because having these teams that are able to rise to the occasion and we had a lot of ambiguity in the world of innovation. We had a lot of ambiguity as to what the future looked like in some of these transitions, like the energy transition, where you're going from a fossil fuel based world to one that was about renewable energy. Nobody could predict what that was going to look like in healthcare. We were going from a centralized model where hospital systems were the way to go to this distributed, oh my gosh, you could do so many different things now even at home because measurements through sensors and cloud existed. And all of a sudden it changed the nature of how this big venerable company was doing business and had to consider how to switch that up to really meet the times. I enjoyed living in the world of ambiguity. I hadn't necessarily thought of it, but it was also about the challenge in being able to deliver with a team.
- [35:52]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Thank you for sharing that. You now serve as a corporate board director, and you actually started serving on boards pretty early in your career. You've been on 20 boards, which is really incredible to me. And you served as board chair. You've been on all the committees. But I imagine that you were often the first, maybe in the beginning in the room, maybe the first woman, maybe the first Asian. What was that like for you? And did you face any barriers that you remember that you had to overcome?
- [36:21]
Sue Siegel
I mean, I don't remember my life any other way. I was always different because, like I said, here I am in the Philippines, and my last name is Seagull. Here I am in Puerto Rico, and my last name is Seagull. And I don't look like a Seagull, do I? I mean, no. I'm Asian, so I never fit the mold. And it's why so many times I felt like, where do I fit? And like, I. My mother said, you're a citizen of the world, and I quickly learned you adapt. So, yes, I was the first in many an occasion on any of the things that you mentioned. It was sort of a common thing for me, and so I didn't find it too unusual. Like anything new, I might have felt a little uncomfortable. But if you focus on the issues and you assume noble intent with the colleagues around you and you realize that you're all trying to head to a common goal, I found that over time and it doesn't happen quickly, that's the other thing I would say. If you're trying to change everything overnight, be careful, because not everyone's going to want to accept your timeline. But if you learn and you listen, I found that people were very willing to also hear me out. And over time, it felt more comfortable. And now I find myself in boardrooms, and I feel very comfortable with my colleagues. I will say respect the time that it takes to earn your position. And you have to earn it.
- [37:56]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yes. And, you know, one of the other differences perhaps I wanted to touch back on is you talked a lot about team and loving teams, but as a board director, you're not managing the team. I mean, you are providing guidance to the leadership team. But how. How are you staying engaged, or how do you get that fixed?
- [38:16]
Sue Siegel
My fix is through mentorship, and it's probably one of the most joyful things that I do. I am both an advisor, a consultant to many CEOs, but I'm also, and I love to do this. I've done it my entire career, I've really had that privilege of being someone that coaches or mentors others. It's just the biggest joy to me to be able to work with somebody. They solve the problem, they work through their issues. But you're there to provide perspectives. You're there to listen, you're there to encourage. You're there to give them a shot in the arm sometimes and say, hold on a second. What did you just say? Are you sure that's what you really meant? And are you sure that's what you want to do? And also bring perspectives. Like, you know, when I went through something like this, let me tell you, some of the ways I thought about it. Doesn't mean it's going to fit your exact situation, but let's talk through it. That, to me, is how I get my fix. And I do that a lot. I do it with a lot of different mentees, and I just feel so lucky that they let me walk alongside them in their journey of growth.
- [39:22]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah, that's wonderful. Speaking of mentorship, did you have any mentors or sponsors that really helped pull you up or help you through your career?
- [39:31]
Sue Siegel
You know what? It's funny because I've been asked that question many times. I didn't have many mentors. I had one that I remember distinctly. His name is Guy Marlow. I worked with him in Amersham. Guy was this sort of bigger than life personality. He was hard driving. He was direct. He was principled. He walked the talk. He taught me that. And he was funny as all hell. And I mean funny. He made me laugh all the time. But he had this way about him that when I screwed up, he'd pull me into his office and say, Siegel. And he'd give me the rundown, and I'd walk out happy. And I'm like, how do you do that? And, you know, that's just something that I said. I need to learn this and lead to learn this notion of direct feedback that was empathetic but also truly filled with humor. I've never gotten quite as good as he did. He was. I picked up little nuggets along the way, and that's been so helpful. He took me under his wing. It was very, very early on in my career at Amersham. And he essentially said, sue, you can do anything you want. He put me in roles of growing responsibility. And I would say, well, I'm not sure I can do that. And he's like. And then I'd go do it. And I realized very quickly, if you set your Mind to it, and you have people who are willing to sort of give you some help along the way, and you ask the questions. It's amazing what happens. So I've learned to bet on myself. I've learned that learning is a privilege, and I've learned that it's just wonderful to learn new things. And again, you're right in that I'd be thrown into this sometimes unclear or new situations that hadn't really been shaped before, and you figure it out. But I wouldn't figure it out on my own. I always figured it out with a team. And it's incredible what a diverse set of individuals can do when you set your mind to it and you try to figure out, where are we headed, what are we trying to do? Let's figure out how to get there. What's our roadmap? Funnest thing is to be able to do that.
- [41:34]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah. And I, I. You also just touched on the power of having somebody who believes in you just giving you that boost of confidence.
- [41:42]
Sue Siegel
Yes. I mean, how many times does that just make you feel better? Although I. I can't say I had mentors in my career otherwise. I learned from a lot of people and what they did. Whenever I got, someone would say, hey, that was. That was good, or, I like the way he went about doing that. It just made you feel like, all right, it's okay. He just kept on doing. And so you keep building the belief in yourself. And I think more and more, that's one of the things I would say we need to do more, particularly as women, is to trust our instincts and believe in ourselves. Because we probably know we just tend to think, oh, someone might be able to do it better than me. And the reality is, sometimes maybe not. Take the opportunity and learn and then show what you got. You might surprise yourself.
- [42:32]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I love that. So you just talked about mentoring, advising, coaching. You also spent a lot of time working with nonprofits. Can you tell us more about why that's important to you and what are you working on now?
- [42:45]
Sue Siegel
I think it's always about helping others. I mean, one of the things that sort of got drilled into me as a child is that we're in this world to help others, and it's just been part of my ethos. And there's nothing more joyful to me than helping others unlock their full potential. That, to me, is just, wow, you know, it's a privilege. It's just very inspiring to me. And working with nonprofits where you're volunteering, you get to have an impact through their mission. And I'm working with a number of nonprofits right now. I work with kff, which is Kaiser Family Foundation. It's an organization that is a research organization, a polling organization, a news organization, and essentially gives voice to those that can't. Another area that I'm working on is I work with a number of universities and I volunteer at Stanford. I'm co chair of the Stanford Board of Fellows. Again in this, this is in the healthcare area. This is bringing together a group of CEOs. The CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, the CFO of J&J. The CEO, ex CEO of Novartis, the CEO, I mean CEO of Amgen. We bring them together as part of the Board of Fellows and it brings a conversation around topics in healthcare and areas where Stanford is also looking for advice. And Stanford sits at this incredible juncture of research to application into their hospital system. And they're looking for advice on how best potentially do some of these cutting edge breakthroughs and deal with some of the ethical things that might come up because of new technologies. I also work with Baker Biogenuity Hub at University of California, Berkeley, which is where UC Berkeley in essence wanted to make sure that it wasn't just Silicon Valley that had all of these startups. They were a big producer of new concepts and new ideas, particularly in the life sciences. You can see this common theme, healthcare, innovation, entrepreneurship. It's kind of what I'm, I guess I love because as I talk about it, I can see that thread is something very constant in what I do.
- [44:58]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yes, and I'll add impact because you mentioned impact many times. And you've built such an incredible portfolio, career of impact that keeps you interested, that's driving innovation. Can you just briefly share, like how do you think about your portfolio? How long does it take to build such a wonderful portfolio like you have?
- [45:18]
Sue Siegel
Well, thank you for that. I have to say when I made the decision to not go back and be a CEO again, I didn't quite know what it was going to look like. And I suspect many executives think about it that way. And frankly, portfolio life wasn't termed that way. It was more like we're going to do boards. And it was sort of a natural extension of what you do after you had a long career as an operator and as an executive. And so I got my first board, ge. Only would that you do one board and it had to be a board that didn't conflict with anything. And ge, I mean they're in appliances, they're in finance, they're in aviation, they're in choo choo trains, they're in healthcare lighting. Very hard to find something that didn't conflict with ge. Along came Align Technology and invited me to be on the board. And Align is the maker. And Invisalign, which is the transparent braces.
- [46:12]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yes, I used them during the pandemic.
- [46:15]
Sue Siegel
That was.
- [46:15]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Many people did, I'm sure.
- [46:16]
Sue Siegel
Incredible. Yes. The zoom effect. We found out it was called the zoom effect because people were looking at themselves. So that was the first board. And then as I was leaving ge, I realized I needed to think about what my next sort of horizon was going to be. So I sat down and I said, what do I want the boards that I'm going to work with look like? And I said, I'm going to do a small cap, a mid cap, a large cap, and potentially a mega cap. And I'll throw in a nonprofit. And that's what I ended up doing. So now my portfolio essentially has three public companies, small cap, two large caps, and then I have a private company, which is the Engine, which is a public benefit corporation. And then I have the nonProfit, which is KFF. So that portfolio is pretty balanced if you look at all of them. Guess what? They're mostly all healthcare. The Engine has a number of different areas that it's involved in beyond healthcare. It has energy, it has infrastructure, et cetera, but for the most part, again, it's healthcare. And I kind of knew, I mean, that's one thing I would say is that having the life sciences and science training and then healthcare learnings over the years has helped me be able to do the different types of roles that I've done because the constant has been life sciences and healthcare. And so I've sort of maintained that while I'm on the board now. That said, I get a lot of calls for other types of board. And I'm thinking, you know what? It might be time.
- [47:46]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Okay, well, I'll come back to you in a year or two, check in.
- [47:49]
Sue Siegel
With you, and then you have to leave time. I mean, I teach at mit and that's been a real opportunity for me. And then I also mentor and I consult advising CEOs. So it's a real portfolio of different activities. It keeps me learning constantly and it keeps me engaged in different ways.
- [48:08]
Alisa Sue Lynch
So when do you play pickleball?
- [48:11]
Sue Siegel
Well, there's a group here that plays on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays early in the morning. And then there's another group that play on Friday afternoons and sometimes on Wednesday afternoons. So somehow or rather, I slot it in and it's not as constant as I'd like. And I love it. Oh, Elisa, I love it. I mean, you must love it too, right? It's.
- [48:31]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I'm hooked. I'm hooked as well. Yes.
- [48:33]
Sue Siegel
It's social, it's fun, it's quick. You can play co ed. I mean, it's just. I mean, I used to play tennis, and that's just a whole different monster.
- [48:42]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I find you get all the fun. You get the exercise and the strategy. Because I love doubles. Playing and thinking about, you know, all the moves and where to place the ball and all of that. Not that I can do it, but it's intellectual to play with you sometime.
- [48:57]
Sue Siegel
We should partner up.
- [48:58]
Alisa Sue Lynch
We need to do that. The two short Asian women against the tall men will do it. So, sue, my last question for you is, what advice would you give to your younger self about navigating your career while staying true to yourself?
- [49:16]
Sue Siegel
I guess I would say a couple of things. Pace yourself. Careers have a long arc. You have the right and you have the benefit of enjoying the journey. We're always in such a rush. And when we're young, we think if we don't do it by the time we're 30, we're not going to have succeeded. That's our O1 construct. I look at my career and I did things so fast, and I look back at that now and said, geez, if I'd stayed in that role for two more years or if I'd done this a little bit longer, and it's not regret, but I know the learning could have been even richer. The other thing I would say to myself, and I did this constantly, but there were some doors I did not walk through. And I would say, don't be afraid to walk through doors, especially when they open unexpectedly. You've got to open your mind to the possibilities, and you got to bet on yourself and trust your instincts. You know, One skill that I'm very grateful to my mother for. She taught me the importance of communication, of public speaking, of storytelling. She insisted that I learned to communicate properly. And oh, my goodness, if I had to tell anybody and my younger self, it's just wonderful advice that my mom gave me, and I would give it to anybody else, is learn how to communicate. I'll give you an example of why I say that. How many times does someone work their tushes off for weeks and they're doing a project and they're deep into the data and they've got all the analysis done and Then they have to go present and they're going to either present to the board or they're going to present to senior management or whoever it might be. They don't want to know all the data. They want to know that you know the data. But they want to hear the story. They want to hear the impact. Why? Why does it matter? And so one piece of advice I would really give is sit down and don't just know the data, but know the story that you're trying to tell. Bring together how you're going to communicate it. Try to figure out what it means and why it's important to the corporation or to society or to whatever, because that's what they want to hear. And your presentation will go over so much better than if it's just about the data and the numbers. I think. One thing I would say, and it goes to this podcast, I don't think you necessarily can choreograph your entire career. You can choreograph how you feel about the learnings through it. You can choreograph your responses to the different opportunities to learn. But don't box yourself in by thinking, here's my 5 year, 10 year, 30 year plan and that you absolutely have to stick with it. Honestly, I would have never known that I would be an operator, a CEO, a venture capitalist, a chief innovation officer, a board member. I just, I wouldn't have been able to tell you any of that. But I was given the opportunity, I was allowed to learn. And I'm so grateful that I did the various things because I look back now and I feel very, very lucky to have been able to work with the kind of teams that I was able to work with and do the kind of things that we were able to do that were impactful to, you know, the corporation or to society.
- [52:57]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Sue, thank you so much for sharing your leadership dance and for paving the way for so many Asian female leaders and others in corporate America and just such incredible advice. But it's been an honor to have you on the podcast and I will see you out on the pickleball court someday. We'll. We'll figure out how to make that happen. So thank you for joining me.
- [53:19]
Sue Siegel
I loved it. And thank you, Elisa, for doing this and for frankly, giving a voice to so many different women and colleagues of yours that I know all they want to do is help others. And the fact that you're willing to invest the time and help others through this is just really meaningful. And I thank you for the opportunity.
- [53:40]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Thank you. And this is part of my new portfolio, life and career.
- [53:44]
Sue Siegel
I I love the fact that you're doing it.
- [53:47]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Like Follow and Share the Leadership Dance where we explore how to choreograph the career of your dreams and chat with visionary leaders who are breaking barriers in the arts and business worlds. Until next time, keep dancing.