Author: amanda.manconi

  • Riding on a Rocket Ship: Shwanna Tauriac on Teamwork and Leadership through Cepheid’s Growth

    Riding on a Rocket Ship: Shwanna Tauriac on Teamwork and Leadership through Cepheid’s Growth

    Why does Senior Sales Director Shwanna Tauriac compare Cepheid to a rocket ship? Because the company’s rapid growth has brought exciting changes—just the sort of challenge Shwanna was looking for in her career. In this interview, Shwanna reflects on her path to Danaher, why an open approach to leadership is best, and the bumpy but exciting road ahead. 

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    What’s your role on the Cepheid team?

    I’m the Senior Director of National Accounts. My sales team consists of seven people managing the largest Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) in the U.S., including government, Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs), and National Reference Labs. 

    Cepheid is growing so rapidly that in addition to coaching the team to secure business and all that fun stuff, I also help to build and improve internal processes. As a manager, my job is to move the ball forward by helping people with suggestions and coaching. For example, if I want my team to reach out to CEOs, I give them the right tools to empower them to feel comfortable speaking with that type of customer. 

    Also, during this time of COVID, I often worked with the teams to help when customers are upset about their allocations or other issues. The customers all want things yesterday, but we only have control of what we can control. It has really been both challenging and rewarding—for myself and my team—to have those tough discussions while still maintaining relationships with the customers.

    Tell us about your journey to Cepheid.

    I am a microbiologist by degree. I’ve always been a science and math geek; it just came naturally to me. And I’ve always been a people person. I come from southern Louisiana, where people are warm, friendly, and full of sunshine. But when I graduated and went to work in a lab, everybody was an introvert. I was like, “Yeah, my bacteria don’t talk back. I’ve got to do something different.” So I started a sales position with VWR International and learned about distribution. 

    But my career really grew when I began as a sales consultant at Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD). Sales was a great marriage between my technical abilities and my personality. At BD, they identified my potential early on—especially my talent with strategic accounts and maintaining high-level relationships—so I went through a leadership development program and eventually got management and capital sales experience.


    When the opportunity at Cepheid presented itself, I honestly wasn’t looking. It just seemed like such a great chance to join a high-growth company that felt like a rocket ship. Because Cepheid is growing so rapidly, there are a lot of things that still need to be worked on here. It’s an opportunity to take my experiences from all the divisions and companies I’ve worked for and build a national strategic account team.

    My first role at Cepheid was as a Regional Director of strategic accounts. This role gave me the opportunity to learn the organization, the people, where they were, what we needed to work toward. I felt comfortable enough to articulate my desire for growth to my manager and the coaches around me, and we made a plan. Within 12 months I was promoted to a senior director.

    And if I ever outgrow Cepheid, I know there will always be other positions within Danaher I could go to and still stay in the family. That sense of family is important to me. 

    Tell us a little bit more about your leadership philosophy.

    As they say, “My hustle game is strong.” If you tell me, “Hey, I need your help out here,” I’m going to be with you. I think people respect when they see that you work really hard. I try to be the best advocate I can for my team. 

    Communication is important, and so is being as open to learning from others as they are to learning from me. For example, we recently reorganized the strategic account teams, and there was a gentleman on my team who filled in during the transition. His style of working with customers wasn’t what I would have done, but his approach has proven to be successful. That was totally exciting for me to see and to learn from.

    I know I have my own unique way of selling and doing my job, and I believe in that type of autonomy because I think it brings creativity. My way isn’t always the right way, but if we all get where we’re trying to go, I’m all good.


    What’s challenging about your job?

    Change management is probably the most challenging part of my job. Cepheid was a startup that allowed for a lot of flexibility. Now that the organization is growing and becoming more of a corporate entity, a lot is changing. For example, executive-level leadership doesn’t have time to work on every single deal anymore, and you can’t go to them whenever you want. We have a chain of command, and we’ve had to develop new approval levels and systems to accommodate this shift. Adapting to these new processes has been challenging, but we are making it through!


    As a manager, I try to help my team with the changes by having open conversations. I believe people should be happy. We spend a lot of our waking hours at work; we should be happy there. And at the end of the day, if someone isn’t happy, they’re not going to give their best. We both have to be all-in for this to work. 

    Also, as we change, we’re developing better processes and systems to accommodate our growth. It’s a challenge, but it’s exciting, too. I appreciate the fact that we’re building the plane while we’re flying because I get to be creative. When I interview candidates, I like to be up-front and honest. I don’t want to waste their time or mine putting on a front or a show. I want to be real. I’m like, “Hey, I need help building this plane, so if you’re in, let’s do it.”


    Looking at the future for you and for Cepheid, what are you excited about?

    Building strategic excellence—we don’t have that yet. It’s exciting to really build a program, to find teaching and learning opportunities for our teams, and ask, “How do we continue that process? How do we help them continue to develop?” I often say these types of things aren’t one-and-done. You constantly have to work toward them and learn more.

    Part of building strategic excellence is choosing the right people. Strategic thinking requires you to not only look at today but five and 10 years down the road. The win in strategic accounts is building that relationship, not getting the PO. The POs will come.

    Honestly, Cepheid is a great company. We have a great product, and we are really going places because innovation is a good part of our repertoire. Of course building processes comes with challenges and hurdles. But once we get there, it’s going to be fantastic. And the journey is great, too. People just have to want to be a part of the ride.

    Interested in joining Shwanna and the rest of the Cepheid team? Check out open roles or join our talent community today.

  • How Cytiva’s Fast Trak Team is Making a Difference

    How Cytiva’s Fast Trak Team is Making a Difference

    In an industry driven by scientific breakthroughs and new drug discoveries, Anne-Cécile Potmans and her Fast Trak team are helping Cytiva customers who manufacture life-saving drugs make their processes better and faster. Below, Anne-Cécile reflects on what brought her to Danaher, explains some of the exciting projects Fast Trak is tackling, and shares what she does to encourage creativity on the team.

    What do you do at Cytiva?

    I’m the general manager for the Fast Trak organization within Cytiva, an operating company that’s part of Danaher’s Life Sciences platform. Cytiva supports customers who research and manufacture pharmaceuticals, and Fast Trak’s role in that work is threefold. We offer training and education to help our customers upgrade their bioprocessing skills and processes, we optimize their processes to address any challenges they’re facing with drug process development, and we handle what’s called “bridge manufacturing,” producing materials for use in clinical trials. The therapies our customers are creating will save lives, so our goal is to help get them to the market as quickly and safely as possible. 

    Tell us about your background and what brought you to this role.

    I’m an engineer by training, and I started my career as a management consultant in France, working for companies in the biopharma and biotech space. After six years there, my husband and I decided to move to Sweden—my husband is half-Swedish—thinking we’d just try it out. But we’ve been here for 10 years now. 

    My work is definitely a reason we’ve stayed; so is Scandinavian culture, which I really respect for equally valuing men and women—both at home and at work. When we moved, I joined GE’s Life Sciences division, which is now Cytiva, and I’ve had many opportunities over the years to take on more responsibility and build new skills. Most recently, I was part of a four-year leadership accelerator at GE similar to Danaher’s General Management Development Program, which taught me a lot not just about leading a team, but about the companies we work with.

    I took the Fast Trak GM role after my last rotation in that program, about a year ago now, and then continued in the role once we officially joined Danaher and became Cytiva.

    I think we were all excited leading up to the acquisition, but it’s still been incredible to see everything this team has accomplished in just a few months—especially in the midst of a global pandemic. We’re simultaneously launching new products, supporting COVID-19 research, and completely rebranding the company. I don’t know of many companies that could produce such results under these circumstances, but we are fortunate to have some really amazing people at Cytiva.

    Innovation is a big part of your work. What enables it?

    Two things: collaboration and culture. Sharing ideas between teams is critical to what we do, because even getting to the same outcome will take much longer if we’re working in silos. Fast Trak is a global organization—we have locations in China, the US, EMEA, India, and Korea—so we hold regular technical meetings with associates from each site to make sure we’re learning from each other by sharing what’s working and the challenges we’re facing. We also collaborate across functions, so commercial, product management and R&D are all working together to improve our customers’ products and processes. 

    Fibro chromatography, a new technology Cytiva is developing, is a recent example. It combines high capacity with high flow rates, which substantially reduces purification times in research and product development, and provides a single-use solution for manufacturers. Our EMEA organization took the lead, driving the analytical work and coordinating efforts, while our team in Korea made new monoclonal antibodies for each center to test. And while R&D developed the new technology, Fast Trak is developing a service to help our customers evaluate and implement this powerful tool. 

    These advancements are possible thanks to the synergy between teams, as well as the constant support of Research and Development and Product Management.

    They’re also due to the culture of innovation we’re creating. To me, that’s about making sure team members feel comfortable taking risks. Of course, there are situations where we want to minimize risk entirely—but if you want to do something new, accepting the possibility of failure is part of the job. It’s when we take risks that we make the most important discoveries.

    What do you do to encourage a culture where people feel safe to take risks?

    Part of it is the nature of our work. When customers come to us, it’s because they have a problem they haven’t been able to solve on their own—so we know we aren’t going to make much progress if we don’t use our expertise and get creative. And everyone on the team likes a challenge; that’s why we’re here in the first place.

    I think it’s also about communication and making sure we celebrate risk-taking. Fast Trak has quarterly awards for team spirit and for execution, but also for innovation. We recognize lessons learned as valuable in and of themselves because they all contribute to the eventual solution.

    The company culture supports that mindset, too. For example, there’s a Cytiva program called Innovation Accelerator where employees can pitch creative ideas around a specific theme—the first one was sustainability. And it’s not a theoretical exercise; you have to explain what you’d need in terms of funding and people as part of your pitch, and the ideas that are selected get support. There are six projects in progress so far, and I’m excited to see not only what they accomplish, but how their example encourages even more innovation. It’s a great way to ensure that good ideas get heard and that everyone knows they can make a difference. 

    What else are you excited about in the months and years ahead?

    I’m excited about learning more tools and processes in the Danaher Business System; I think the continuous improvement approach will be helpful in building efficiency both internally and for our customers. DBS can be daunting, but Danaher’s team has taken a smart approach, introducing us to it gradually so we can build our muscles and focus on the areas that are the highest priority.

    Our work on innovative process development never ends, so I’m also looking forward to seeing what advanced technologies such as AI might mean for our work. Of course, most exciting of all is seeing the impact we’re having every day. Fast Trak’s work is a piece of the much larger puzzle. When we improve customers’ processes, they can make and distribute therapeutics that much sooner, and run their clinical trials that much more effectively. And that really does save lives.

    Interested in joining Anne-Cécile and the rest of the Cytiva team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

  • Meaningful, Incremental Change in a Growing Market

    Meaningful, Incremental Change in a Growing Market

    When Dong Li, the Director of Clinical Affairs (CA) for Beckman Coulter China, left the United States and moved to Shanghai with his family, he was on a mission to build a top-notch clinical function to help Beckman Coulter China gain a competitive edge in the country’s In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) industry. With an increasing focus on collecting clinical evidence for both product registration and market access, Clinical Affairs has become the “gatekeeper” before vital diagnostic products go to market. The approval processes can be lengthy and complex, but Dong knows that the most effective change is incremental, and Danaher Business System (DBS) tools have been serving him well. Below, read about Dong’s leadership—which has now expanded to CA for several Danaher operating companies in China—how his team at Beckman improved the complex clinical study process with DBS tools, and his take on the future of CA in China, a market with massive global potential.

    Tell us a bit about your role at Beckman and the larger impact the company is making.

    I’m on a mission to build the clinical muscles for our business in China, so to speak. In the past five years, China has ramped up its regulations around IVD clinical research. The National Medical Products Administration (NMPA)—which is the equivalent of the FDA in the United States—wants to ensure the quality of all the medical products that come through China, which means very stringent inspections for companies running clinical studies here. My role is to build a strong, reliable, Clinical Affairs function that not only improves the clinical study execution—meaning delivering high-quality clinical projects on time and within budget—but also creates a competitive edge for our business through innovation.

    Beckman has been working on a variety of products to make diagnostic testing more effective for critical issues like sepsis, tumors, and cardiac diseases. In 2020, we had several products successfully licensed in China, including assays for cardiac and infectious diseases. And we’ve engaged some of the top hospitals in China to run more innovative clinical research on diagnostic products to help doctors deal with healthcare challenges more efficiently and effectively.

    Why did you join Beckman?

    In China, we talk about three elements of success: the geographical advantage, the favorable climate, and the people. Essentially, that’s being in the right place at the right time with the right people. When I joined Beckman Coulter China in 2019, the timing and place were just right to start pushing high-quality clinical research in China. That left the right people, and once I met my future colleagues, I knew Danaher offered that, too.

    I actually learned about Danaher back in business school. I’d always been intrigued by how DBS empowered a wide variety of businesses, and I wondered about its secrets. So I think that was the last piece of the puzzle that brought me back to China after 20 years living and working in the U.S. and Europe.

    Tell us about some changes you’ve already implemented across Clinical Affairs.

    One of the main metrics we use is on-time delivery (OTD) for our clinical trial cycle time; that’s a good surrogate for our products’ time-to-market. When I started, the number was in the single digits. Part of my mission was to improve the execution—to speed up the OTD while maintaining quality and keeping an eye on the budget. We used DBS and kaizens—weeklong sessions where we work though specific problems—to make a series of incremental changes to improve this metric. We also worked closely with our vendors and our clinical research laboratories, and now our OTD is at 100%.

    We also used a kaizen to create a formalized process for integrating the China requirements into the early stages of product design. The requirements in China are different from the U.S. or Europe, so this kind of review will have a huge impact in terms of getting our products to the Chinese market. Instead of having to backtrack later, we’re building in the China requirements from the beginning, which makes developing the clinical study protocol more effective.

    Tell us about some opportunities for innovation at Beckman.

    When it comes to innovation, people often refer to technologies and products, but innovation can also happen elsewhere. In the clinical research field, this is especially true for process innovation. We’re currently trying to reduce our clinical evaluation timeline by 50% without impacting the project budget and quality.

    Of course, advancing technology is also critical to helping us achieve our innovation goals. For example, digitization in IVD clinical research in China is relatively behind, but we’re catching up. This year, we’ve started several digitization efforts across our team, including an electronic data-capturing system in our clinical trials and a new clinical trial management system to help us digitize our paper-based documents. Our statisticians and data scientists are also investigating opportunities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms with our clinical data.

    What kind of team are you excited to build?

    The word that comes to my mind is bamboo because it has attributes that a great team carries—it’s flexible, resilient, and grows quickly. The regulatory environment for IVD clinical research in China is extremely dynamic; in terms of requirements, cost, and timelines, it’s very different than even five years ago. And because this trend will probably continue in the next decade, a flexible and adaptive mindset is the key to staying competitive in this market.

    In terms of resilience, IVD clinical research in China can be very complex and nerve-wracking. Our team needs a strong support system—with DBS as our foundation—so we can deliver under pressure.

    And we also need to grow quickly, just like bamboo does—and just like our industry. We have a narrow window of opportunity to develop and grow a leading-edge clinical research function to catch up to the drastic growth of China’s IVD industry, so it’s especially exciting that in 2020 our Clinical Affairs team doubled in size.

    What does the future hold for your team?

    I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m certain of the demand for clinical-based research in China’s IVD industry. So we’re looking at all kinds of ways to innovate to meet that demand, from global multi-center trials and real-world evidence studies to overseas clinical data and the digitization efforts I mentioned.

    How do we prepare and get ready for what comes next? One thing we’ve been advocating for in the Clinical Affairs team is the concept of a “learning institute.” Essentially, we’d like to create a learning environment similar to an MBA program within our team, where team members with different industry and educational backgrounds can share knowledge and ideas, with a good mix of hands-on work and classroom training.

    Interested in joining Dong and the rest of the Beckman Coulter team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

  • Raising Her Hand: Carla McDowell-Buchanan on Growing with Cepheid

    Raising Her Hand: Carla McDowell-Buchanan on Growing with Cepheid

    From manufacturing oligonucleotides to keeping new product introduction teams aligned, to validating new facilities, to leading blue-sky innovations, Carla McDowell-Buchanan has worn an exceptional number of hats during her 14 years at Cepheid. Below, she explains the game-changing developments she’s helped launch; reflects on how both the company and its Bothell, Washington, location have evolved over the years; and shares her excitement about taking on new challenges—including as a leader.

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    What do you do at Cepheid?

    I’m a principal scientist at our Bothell, Washington, location, which is the company’s main raw material reagent manufacturing site. There’s also an R&D component to our work that helps keep that pipeline going with new reagents, which expands our current technology capability. 

    My main focus is looking for opportunities to expand the value proposition of the Cepheid platform, and do everything we can to innovate first and stay ahead of the competition. I’m also now leading a team of scientists working on an innovation project involving new chemistries to enhance our tests for better use in point-of-care settings.

    Tell us about your path to Cepheid—and since joining.

    The work I did for my doctorate was a nice fit with what we do here. I studied electron transfer mechanisms in DNA repair resulting from the photoproducts formed in DNA, and much of that scientific understanding directly aligned with Cepheid’s molecular diagnostic technology. One of the first chemists to work here at Bothell was also a postdoc at the University of Washington, where I went to school, and they initially brought me in for a temporary position, covering someone’s summer vacation. They liked what I was able to contribute, and in 2007, I was hired full-time in oligonucleotide manufacturing.

    Cepheid was much smaller then, but we were going through what at the time was a huge growth period for us, and I was able to scale up and improve some different processes so we could synthesize higher quality oligonucleotides at a larger scale. After about a year and a half, the Bothell site was getting large enough that we also needed to start establishing more formal processes for design control and product transfer, and I took the lead on developing those departments. That gave me some expertise in validating chemical reagents, oligonucleotides, and qualifying instrumentation—which then led to a role as a technical liaison, where I was part of the core teams not only here but also at Cepheid’s locations in Sweden and Sunnyvale, California. I helped keep everyone in sync on new products required to be transferred to manufacturing.

    From there, my responsibilities became multi-layered—for about five years I managed Product Transfer, Program Management, and worked as site liaison for new product introductions. As our real estate in Bothell grew, we needed someone to handle facility validation—things like HVAC systems, above-ground waste tanks, and moving chemistry and oligo manufacturing, where you have to decommission and then re-qualify all the instruments. I wasn’t an engineer, but I’d learned a lot about validation protocols and systems, so I worked on those efforts for about a year and a half. We were also able to make some changes like adding large-volume solvent delivery systems. Then I moved into doing innovation, where I am now. 

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    That’s a lot of different projects! Were you “tapped on the shoulder” most of the time, or were the moves your idea?

    I’d say it’s mostly been me raising my hand—recognizing a gap and trying to put something in place to alleviate the pain points. But part of that comes from listening to the vision of our leaders. My first innovation project was sparked by a presentation from our former CEO, John Bishop. I remember he had this slide of our GeneXpert® Infinity-80 system, with DNA, RNA, cells, and proteins all run on that same device. I’d worked with proteins before I came here, and I thought, “I wonder if there’s some way to integrate protein detection on top of the nucleic acid?”

    My prototype that involved detection of different types of biomarkers that took about three years for a proof-of-principle prototype. [Editor’s note: This achievement earned Carla the Excellence in Innovation Award from Danaher, Cepheid’s parent organization, in 2020.]

    How would you describe this current moment, for Cepheid in general and the Bothell site specifically?

    Compared to a few years ago, I do see a difference in our culture—especially here at the Bothell site. Back when I was the technical liaison between the three locations, this site was so much smaller, and it was more like a startup. It was really Sweden and Sunnyvale that had the oversight and regulatory processes in place to get their outputs onto shelves and into clinicians’ hands. At our size, and with our R&D mindset, adding those layers of accountability—things like specification settings and addressing nonconformances—was a challenge. 

    But we’ve grown. And I think today, people are much more willing to speak up in a meeting and share a new idea, rather than working on it in the background until they find something that works. Maybe your idea doesn’t end up being the one we use, or maybe it’s combined with something else. But you definitely have a safe space to talk about it and contribute. 

    At the Cepheid level, I think what we’re seeing now—especially since joining Danaher in 2016—is a real commitment to stay ahead of disruptive technology in our space. That’s important, because it’s what will allow us to stay relevant and realize the potential of all these ideas we have to help patients by developing new instruments, chemical reagents, and detection modalities. Cepheid has earned a lot of respect globally on the quality of our diagnostic tests, and we aren’t willing to bend on that. But our leaders are very focused on making sure innovation is happening, and they carve out the resources and opportunities for our scientists to think creatively and come up with better solutions.

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    What are you looking forward to right now?

    At the moment, I’m so immersed in getting over a technical hurdle related to the current innovation project that it’s all I can think about! But I am pretty excited to someday see this project go from the blue-sky phase we’re in now all the way through to advancement in a technology that the company can use. My director has a strong background in the assay development space we are interested in, so he understands what we’re doing and he’s very supportive. He’s also exposing me to the higher-level aspects of the projects I’m working on—I sit on the steering committee, for example. Even at this phase, there is some level of structure moving the project forward, and with that comes a commitment from leadership to give us what we need to realize the vision. I started out working on it solo, but I’ve since been able to grow the scientific team to five. If we can eventually see all that work turn into something patients can use, that will be very rewarding. 

    I’m also looking forward to growing my leadership skills, now that I have the opportunity to manage multiple scientists and especially because we’re working across two different locations. I’m learning how to keep communication going and make sure people are engaged, feel valued, and know that they’re part of a team. I’m trying to do for them what my director does for me—if there’s a roadblock, I figure out what I can do to remove it. I do gravitate toward the early, pre-concept work I’ve done as a bench scientist. It intrigues me and feeds my curiosity. But I feel like I’m also gaining a new appreciation for being a leader.

    Interested in joining Carla and the rest of the Cepheid team? Check out open roles or join the Danaher talent community today.

  • Lifelong Learning: The Path from Lab Tech to Award-Winning Salesperson

    Lifelong Learning: The Path from Lab Tech to Award-Winning Salesperson

    Donald Mofokeng, Regional Sales Manager in South Africa, came to the HemoCue Sales team with a background in lab science and a drive to help people. He loves the daily challenges of leading a sales team and is motivated by knowing that working hard means more people will have access to HemoCue’s life-supporting technology in resource-poor settings. Read more about how Donald transformed from lab tech to award-winning salesperson in just two years.

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    Tell us about your role. What do you work on day to day?

    I lead a team of five area sales managers who cover four provinces in South Africa. Basically, I oversee the team’s day-to-day sales activities and ensure that my team stays motivated. I help them remove roadblocks and sort out challenges that arise, and I make sure we use company time and resources to move us toward achieving our objectives. For instance, I frequently accompany area sales managers to crucial meetings with the customers to provide support. Or I might take action to assist the team to address any sales objective shortfall. Of course, all of this requires working collaboratively across functions. Of all my responsibilities, I most enjoy traveling to see different customers across the country.

    In South Africa, we have a fair amount of public healthcare facilities catering to rural and underprivileged communities. Most people out in these areas don’t have the luxury of having a lab next to where they live. They sometimes need to choose between paying for transport to the clinic and buying food with the little money they have. I sleep well at night knowing that getting our point-of-care analyzers to these facilities is helping patients.

    What brought you to HemoCue? Tell us a bit about your journey. 

    I’m a person who likes to try new things. I started out as a medical technologist in 2001, and then qualified as a hematology technologist and worked in a hematology laboratory. To diversify my knowledge, I moved to a clinical pathology laboratory, then a molecular laboratory. 

    I got to the point where I was pretty much doing everything a lab manager would do, and I felt I had hit a ceiling. My role included liaising with our suppliers, and that’s where my interests started to expand. I’ve always really liked taking care of patients, and I realized that I could continue to help people outside the laboratory by directly providing innovative solutions to healthcare facilities.

    I was using HemoCue’s products in the lab, and the HemoCue representatives I worked with were very professional. They really cared about us as their customer, and they really cared about the patients, which made me think I’d like to eventually work for HemoCue someday. That was 10 years ago. Before joining HemoCue, the longest I had stayed with a certain company was six years. What has kept me here is the excitement of the new challenges that come every day.

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    How have you grown since joining HemoCue?

    I came to HemoCue with a strong medical device background from the lab, but I had zero experience in sales. Within two years, I was Area Sales Manager of the Year. I’m really proud of that. When I was hired, I made it my first priority to use every opportunity to learn as much as I could from my colleagues and from the company-offered courses so I’d be comfortable and confident when I went out to sell.

    I also raised my hand and said, “I can do it” any time my manager wanted to delegate anything. And if I saw an opportunity to assist with something, I would go ahead and do it without being asked. Then I applied for the regional sales manager post because it would give me a team to work with. That was in 2019, and I haven’t looked back since. I feel fortunate to be part of Danaher because it means I’ll continue to have opportunities to learn and grow.

    Tell us a bit about your management style. What’s important to you about being a leader?

    I like to collaborate and, luckily, in my job, I collaborate a lot. We move as a team, and as the team leader, I work hard to create a safe space where everyone is willing to speak their mind, share their ideas and challenges, and work toward solutions together. I always want to hear the thoughts of the people on my team before I start talking about what I think. Having open communication helps gain trust and buy-in, and it also encourages innovative ideas. I’m also always trying to learn more about the capabilities and potential of the people on my team because I want to find alignment between what they are good at and what the company needs and help nourish that. 

    What’s next for you? What are you most looking forward to in the months and years ahead? 

    I want to expand my impact. Though I’ve been with HemoCue for 10 years, I’m not comfortable doing only one thing for a very long time. I like being in a position where I’m able to pick up on potential opportunities for improving the company, and I want to be able to act on these ideas. For example, recently in South Africa, we’ve noticed an interesting trend where more professional nurses are acquiring clinics, and more medical laboratory technologists are starting to own labs. And we think this trend will continue. Because of this changing landscape, we are now talking to customers—nurses and technologists—that we’ve never spoken to before, and we are doing it in a very systematic way. This approach is in the infancy stage, but I know it’s going to grow and because we are on top of it, the company will grow too. That’s exciting.

    Interested in joining Donald and the rest of the HemoCue team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

  • Where Science Meets Access: How Daniela Rodriguez Helps Mammotome Provide Life-Saving Technology

    Where Science Meets Access: How Daniela Rodriguez Helps Mammotome Provide Life-Saving Technology

    After childhood dreams of being a doctor, Supplier Management Engineer Daniela Rodriguez found a career path that blends her skills in math and her passion for problem-solving by helping others through medical technology. Daniela explains her journey to mechanical engineering and Mammotome, her involvement in Danaher’s LatinX + Friends Associate Resource Group, and why considering gender and race is crucial to providing quality medical care.

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    Tell me a bit about Mammotome and your role there.

    Mammotome is a global leader in breast cancer diagnostics and surgical solutions. We pioneered vacuum-assisted breast biopsy, which improved breast cancer diagnostics, as well as the overall patient experience because the procedure is minimally invasive. It was a real game-changer in the industry.

    I’m a supplier management engineer, which means I’m the bridge between our contract manufacturing suppliers and us. Day-to-day, I facilitate conversations with our contract manufacturers, everything from helping out with quality changes to delivery issues. In our group, we like to call ourselves firefighters, because when issues arise, we’re the first to know. We put out the fires by finding solutions, both in the moment and for the long term.

    I also created and now oversee our obsolescence program, which addresses parts of our equipment from suppliers that are getting older and maybe going out of production, not recommended for new design, or parts that are hard to procure. We try to forecast the demand and find alternates if possible. It’s a cross-functional effort within our company—everybody’s involved. 

    My work is very dynamic. Every day is different, which is why I enjoy my job. It keeps my blood pumping!

    What sparked your interest in engineering? And what brought you to Mammotome? 

    Part of it is that engineering runs in my family: My father was a mechanical engineer. He’d studied and worked in the U.S. but later moved back to Colombia, married my mom and had me. When I was a teenager, we immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia in pursuit of a better life. Math and science were always my strongest subjects—I think partly because they’re universal. It didn’t matter that I was learning them in my second language. I’d always wanted to be a doctor because identifying and solving problems fascinated me, and problem-solving is also what drove me to love engineering. Engineering allowed me to combine my passion for medical work with my skills in math. So I became the first female engineer in my family. 

    After getting my degree in mechanical engineering, I got a job at a contact lens manufacturer. That was in Atlanta, where I went to school. Eventually, I made my way to Ohio. I have family near Cincinnati, which is a major biomedical hub, with companies like Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Ethicon, and, of course, Mammotome. I knew about Mammotome’s top-of-the-line products, but what really attracted me was the cause and how the company puts patients first.

    Being a woman, the issue of breast cancer hits close to home. On one hand, it doesn’t matter what your social, racial, or political background is. Cancer is something that is a risk to all of us. On the other hand, Hispanic women are one of the least likely groups to seek out preventative measures for breast cancer. There are lots of reasons—finances, language barriers, lack of health insurance—but, as a Hispanic woman, this issue really speaks to me.

    Knowing that we are impacting women’s lives motivates me to get up each morning and do the best I can.

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    How have you learned and grown at Mammotome?

    When I first started here, Danaher Business System (DBS) tools quickly oriented me with the basics, so I could hit the ground running. From there, I was blessed with a great team and manager who helped me. I learn by asking questions. I’m definitely not a shy person when it comes to not knowing things, and the culture at Mammotome welcomes people who want to learn, to know more, and to continuously improve. Furthermore, my boss trusts me to take on new tasks, while still providing guidance if I need it. Their management style really works well for me, and we get along great.

    The obsolescence program is a great example of a task he gave me to really take on and make my own. Before I started, people would talk through a list of components every week, but we’ve improved the process by adding timelines, clarifying end goals, and allocating resources. Now, the obsolescence program has become one of our biggest cross-department meetings and has helped prevent serious supply chain obstacles. Sourcing components remains an ongoing challenge, not only because of the pandemic but also due to other global crises like a water shortage in Taiwan, where half of the world’s semiconductors are made, for example. But the program has done a lot, and it’s something that I’m very proud of owning and working on.

    Finally, I’ve also grown in terms of advocacy. I’m heavily involved within the company with Danaher’s LatinX + Friends Associate Resource Group (ARG), Mammotome Inclusion and Belonging initiatives, the Society of Women Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. My focus is on advocating for and increasing the representation of Hispanic women in roles like mine.

    Tell us more about your advocacy work and participation with the LatinX + Friends ARG.

    Women, especially women of color, are underrepresented in STEM. That data speaks for itself, but I also learned about the additional challenges we face from an early age, when my father explained, “You have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good.” I think times are changing, and I want to see and be a part of that change. That’s why it’s important for me to be part of the LatinX group. No one else in my direct department is in that ARG, so I like to keep people informed about what we do. 

    I think people forget how many different Hispanic identities there are, especially in Latin America. Sometimes people can’t find my home country, Colombia, on a map, or they misspell it with a “u.” If you put a Colombian, an Argentinian, and a Mexican person in a room, we’re all going to speak differently and have different customs. So with the LatinX + Friends ARG, I get to learn more about other cultures while also teaching fellow associates about my own. We’re proud of our Hispanic heritage 365 days a year, not just in October. It can be hard to have conversations about race, especially for me, as someone who is non-confrontational. I’m trying to learn—by taking courses and just through better understanding—how to handle a room and get my point across without it being too personal or too emotional.

    As a Colombian, I want to create a positive memory for people. And as a woman, too. There weren’t a lot of female engineers as role models for me growing up, but those few that were there, like my professors in college, really inspired me. I’d like to be an inspiration for future generations. 

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    What’s next in your career? What are you excited about?

    I’m excited to connect more in person. I started just a few months before the pandemic hit, so most of my work has been online. That meant I was able to work from Colombia for several months and spend a lot of time with my family, which was wonderful. But I’m definitely a people person, and, once it’s safe, I would love to get more involved with Mammotome’s volunteer events in the community, maybe even create new volunteer opportunities. Data shows that Hispanic women respond more to community-based programs that promote proper breast care and early breast cancer detection, so this work is vital and important for my own advocacy goals. 

    Right now, I’m focused on doing my best work and learning from my peers. I would like to continue down my path at Danaher, which may lead to becoming a subject matter expert or, eventually, a people leader. I like to think I’m someone people can trust and communicate with. Being that type of leader inspires me, and I think with proper training I could be very successful in that role. Thanks to Danaher’s tools, I’ve been able to take some courses, and I know there is a guided path forward for career growth. 

    Interested in joining Daniela and the rest of the Danaher team? Check out open roles or join our talent community today. 

  • Cepheid Regulatory Affairs Specialist Anisha Panth on Constant Growth—and Paying it Forward

    Cepheid Regulatory Affairs Specialist Anisha Panth on Constant Growth—and Paying it Forward

    After joining Cepheid as the International Regulatory Affairs team’s first intern, Anisha Panth quickly found herself in a full-time role—and she hasn’t stopped learning since. Below, she shares the challenges and opportunities that come with working in a fast-moving field within a fast-growing company and explains how she’s helping to pave the way for those who come after her, within Cepheid and beyond.

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    What do you do at Cepheid?

    I cover Southeast Asia, Japan, and Australia for our International Regulatory Affairs team—we work with the authorities in each country to make sure they have the information they need to approve Cepheid products. Essentially, it’s our job to show that our test kits are safe and effective. That usually starts with compiling a submission dossier that has our package inserts along with detailed analytical and clinical reports, along with country-specific requirements. Then regulatory authorities will come back to us with any questions they have. Often, we need to reach out to other teams here at Cepheid for the answers, so we do a lot of cross-functional work, especially with R&D, Quality, and Product Transfer. We also collaborate closely with our Regulatory Affairs teammates in the U.S., who have a lot of detailed insight because they’ve already launched the product there.

    The way we work differs from country to country. Sometimes we don’t have a local office, but we do have a distributor who acts as an intermediary. In other places, like Australia, we work directly with the regulatory authority. The pace of our work also varies depending on the location. From some places, like South Korea, we’re getting new questions every day. Others might reach out just a couple of times per month.

    Tell us about your background and your path to this role.

    I was initially introduced to regulatory affairs when I was in New Zealand, studying for my master’s in pharmaceutical sciences; it was part of our core curriculum. At the time, I wanted to work in the lab. But I have a wrist injury that eventually made that too difficult, and I liked the idea of getting closer to patients—even the best product isn’t much good to people if it’s sitting on the shelf. One of my main research topics, for example, was pain management after knee replacement, and our idea was to inject microparticles that would allow patients to start physical therapy more quickly. At first, I assumed we could be helping patients within two or three years. But I realized there’s so much more involved in bringing a product to market, including regulatory work, which I find so interesting. Every country is different, and things are constantly changing. You really have to be on your toes.

    After I finished my degree, I moved to the U.S. and did a second master’s in medical product development management with a focus on regulatory affairs. One of my professors, Sowmya Arunkumar, is also the Senior Director of International Regulatory Affairs here at Cepheid. I first joined as an intern on her team. My mentor, Sruti Krishna, handled Southeast Asia at the time, and I took on some of her responsibilities. She’d trained me well and had been good about documentation, plus the team was very supportive. It went well, and when my internship was over, I was offered a full-time position. That was almost four years ago, and I’ve since been able to move into more senior positions twice, still as a regulatory affairs specialist. And I’m working with Sruti again—she’s currently on the U.S. regulatory affairs team, and I shadow her on one of her core teams working on regulatory affairs for a new product launch.

    What kinds of challenges do you face?

    Sometimes the questions we get from regulators are vague or difficult to understand, and the guidance they offer can be ambiguous. So, there’s some trial and error. But there are also a lot of resources, whether it’s training or guidance online, or just asking your manager for help. And once you finally figure something out, it’s so satisfying!

    There’s also a lot to keep up with in regulatory affairs, which I think is especially hard when you’re new to the field. Regulations are constantly changing, but you do get used to that. Management also provides a lot of tools to help. We have access to a global database called Tarius, and our partners from other teams will come in to educate us and give us a more in-depth understanding of their work.

    For me personally, time management has been a challenge. On top of my usual responsibilities, I might be covering for an open role or someone who’s on leave, and I always want to balance the day-to-day with learning new things. But I’m in a mentorship program that’s given me some tools for prioritizing and even delegating, and my manager really helps, too. I have had times when I felt like I was working at every opportunity, but that was because I wanted to—our team is actually very flexible.

    While something like COVID-19 obviously requires adaptation, our managers are very understanding of our boundaries. For example, I just got a puppy, so I’ve blocked time on my calendar for training him. Cepheid has grown a lot since I joined four years ago, but I still feel like management is understanding of our needs.

    And even though I’ve earned my certification, continuing education is still critical in our field. Whenever I see something new, I like to dig into it. Our team has “no-meeting Fridays” every week, so we can focus on building regulatory intelligence. Management definitely understands that there’s new guidance out every day, and it’s important that we keep up to date. 

    What have you learned since joining Cepheid—and how does the company support that?

    My first couple of years here, I was working toward my global certification from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS). Preparing for the exam takes a lot of time; thankfully, my manager Ting Chen and my entire team were very supportive. And I do think getting certified has made me better at my job; when you understand the background and history behind a regulation, it’s much easier to interpret the current guidance. A lot of the regulations in Southeast Asia, for example, are based on the ones in the U.S. and EU. The more educated you are, the easier it is to quickly find the answer when a teammate comes to you with a question.

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    Tell us what it’s been like to contribute to the COVID-19 fight.

    Very fast-paced, especially at the beginning. Obviously, this was an unprecedented situation, so the regulatory authorities were adapting in real-time, coming up with new requirements—and we had to adapt along with them. We were constantly on watch to see what guidance they were releasing, and that was exhausting at times. But it was a great learning experience. Of course, each country wanted to move as quickly as possible, and they worked closely with us to expedite approvals. In a place like Singapore, for example, where it would normally take about a year to approve a test kit, we were able to do it within a week or two.

    For me, the big takeaway was that we should be working toward more harmonization between countries. We’re often providing very similar documentation to each and standardizing that could make a big difference in an urgent situation like COVID-19. There have been some efforts toward that in the industry over the years, and I’m looking at how our team might be able to get involved. 

    You’re also a teacher and mentor, both within Cepheid and beyond. Tell us about that work.

    The teaching was at San Jose State University, where I studied with Sowmya. She asked me last year if I’d be interested in helping her update her curriculum to align with recent regulations. That was another great learning experience because I was reading so much, from so many different countries. I also got to add some things that I thought would help the students. And I learned a lot from their questions, too! Sometimes it’s really tough to find the answer, and you have to do a deep dive. 

    The mentoring is here at Cepheid, working with people in our internship program. Because I was an intern myself, I wanted to give back once I had a few years experience and felt like I was ready. It’s also been an opportunity to see what some aspects of people management look like, in case I want to explore that at some point.

    Because of the pandemic, the entire internship program was remote, and I couldn’t just stop by my mentee’s desk. But we adapted pretty quickly. We met every morning to talk about what she was working on—and even a bit of our lives outside work. She had a great attitude, and I really enjoyed it.

    What are your plans for the future?

    In the short term, I just started working with Australia a couple of months ago, so I’m excited to learn more about their regulations. Our team also supports our Regulatory Affairs colleagues across other regions as new regulations take effect, and I’m looking forward to helping out with that, too. Down the road, I do think people management is something I’d like to explore, and there’s certainly lots of opportunity at Cepheid; we’re growing so quickly. But I have some things to learn before I get to that point. Right now, I want to focus on just being as good at regulatory affairs as I can. 

    Ultimately, my goal is to be an expert—a one-stop shop when someone has regulatory questions. And when they’re facing a challenge, I want to be someone who can help come up with a solution. In a lot of companies, regulations are sometimes seen as a hurdle because there are a lot of requirements to meet. But I think we can have much more value as partners, working with our colleagues to get products to patients as quickly as possible.

    Interested in joining Anisha and the rest of the Cepheid team? Check out open roles or join our talent community today. 

  • Impact and Belonging: How Ankita Rege Found Work She Loves in a Culture of Safety

    Impact and Belonging: How Ankita Rege Found Work She Loves in a Culture of Safety

    From studying engineering to running regional marketing for HemoCue India, Ankita Rege has found her passion in work that serves her community in point-of-care blood diagnostics. Below, she discusses the immense potential of helping users both directly and indirectly and how a heavy workload feels manageable in a trusting and supportive workplace where she has the psychological safety to say “no.”

    Tell us about your role. What do you work on day to day?

    I work as Marketing Manager for HemoCue India. It is quite a comprehensive role as there are multiple facets to it and it’s not limited to the strategic marketing plans, which form the core of the role. It also expands to handling communications, annual plans layout, fulfilling tender requirements, customer support, updating literature and so on, at a regional level. Connecting internally with the sales team and externally with the customers frequently helps me get the real-time market pulse. The sales team is the center of HemoCue, and they help with real-time and new information updates, which in turn helps us stay ahead of the curve.

    Our systems appear very simple, but we have a complex customer segment. We have a hematology portfolio and a diabetic portfolio. It’s very broad and one must reinvent new opportunities every time. It’s not always a duplication. The anemia and diabetes markets are huge, and awareness is still at its nascent stage with a lot to be done across the world. Working with government bodies, understanding the common vision, and presenting HemoCue’s solutions have now become routine.

    So, it’s interesting. It’s sometimes tough; it’s a big task, but I thoroughly enjoy it as I get to learn a lot each day.

    What brought you to HemoCue?

    Having completed my basic education in engineering, I joined the Medical Devices industry, firstly in servicing and then gradually moved into sales. As a freshly graduated engineer, I had ambitions to be part of inventing, modifying and redesigning instruments, machines, etc. as well as be a part of the change process. Although India is now developing into a reasonable R&D hub, back then the industry was mostly into promotion and maintenance. 

    I got opportunities to work with Fortune 500 companies, which helped me build my basic understanding of the market. I enjoyed those roles where I had the opportunity to travel to new places – meeting new and different personalities, providing them with solutions and helping them achieve excellence in their endeavors. However, I was mostly executing the strategies and providing real-time solutions.

    I enrolled myself in an international MBA course in Boston, Massachusetts and when I came back home, I started working in the marketing domain.

    When I started working in healthcare, I realized there’s immense potential to touch people’s lives directly and indirectly. I, as an individual, feel so much for other human beings irrespective of their status. With HemoCue, I thought I was actually making a difference in the lives of people and society at large. Compared to my past marketing stint with aesthetic healthcare, I feel that my current role adds direct value and more people benefit. Here I am at HemoCue, working for a real need in healthcare, solving someone’s problem. That really makes me feel proud to be associated with HemoCue.

    In addition to helping people, what else keeps you at HemoCue?

    What matters a lot is the culture, the people. HemoCue has an amazing culture, and the best part is you can be yourself. To work is one thing, right? You can get overwhelmed with work, which is perfectly fine. You’ll still learn to manage with the experience you gain. At HemoCue, we have a great set of teams driven by trust and respect toward each other, so that’s what keeps me here. I enjoy it and there’s absolute openness and freedom to be yourself here. I can vouch for this and with amazing leaders it makes it worth it.

    There are a lot of people who have been here for a long time, so there is a good bond and trust among people, which is essential. Trust is the core that cannot be compromised. Respect for each other, for who you are, irrespective of the cadre or role is crucial. There are times when you agree and disagree on something, which is fine as long as you can justify why. There have been situations when an activity or an engagement has been proposed and I felt comfortable and candid enough to say, “I don’t see how this is going to help.”

    My manager gives me the psychological safety to say “no,” which is very critical. If I’m just being pressured to execute, and I can’t do my work wholeheartedly, it is no fun whatsoever. Here, I have the freedom to speak my mind. If it’s rational and justifiable, it will be considered. There have been times when I was convinced my “no” should be reconsidered, and this was only possible through respectable constructive dialogues. And I would like to praise my manager, he’s extremely humble, reachable and has almost zero ego. There is no apprehension, there’s no fear. You feel very liberated. Being heard is important.

    Here at HemoCue India, we are, to a great extent, contributing to the government’s vision of eradicating anemia. We’re touching lives by testing and addressing this area, which plays a big part. I feel good about what HemoCue is, directly and indirectly, able to add to people’s lives, and that makes me feel satisfied with being an HemoCue associate.

    Does this tie into how you’re able to be comfortable as a woman on a leadership team that’s particularly male-dominant?

    Definitely. I’ve never gotten those indications, or been made to feel I’m the only woman, or I’m the minority. I’ve never had that kind of incident. Since my background is in engineering, I’ve always been in the ratio of something like 60 boys and 4 girls in a classroom, so that’s been a standard for me. However, irrespective of gender, I think one has to see through the lens of capability rather than anything else.

    There are still organizations that are very autocratic. HemoCue is certainly not. But we’re in an era when the days of total control are gone. Even parenting has changed. We’re not in an era when somebody else would decide things for us. There’s no hierarchical binding here at HemoCue. There are so many organizations out there that follow hierarchy and follow egos. But here it isn’t so. And it means there’s no micromanagement.

    What excites you about the future?

    The future looks bright and promising, there is lots to do and new opportunities to explore. There is a subtle responsibility for people who work in healthcare. If we can give them the right tools and support, they can change the direction of the industry, and the next generations of mankind will benefit.

    At a personal level, I believe I can stand out as a leader globally as well. I look forward to higher responsibilities within or outside the region and, most importantly, I believe HemoCue-Danaher has the right approach and opportunities for their employees.

  • Tam Emerson on Cultural Change and Pushing Pall Forward

    Tam Emerson on Cultural Change and Pushing Pall Forward

    From teaching elementary school students as an AmeriCorps member to helping young professionals develop leadership skills, Tam Emerson has spent her career working to support people from underrepresented communities—and now she’s continuing that work at Pall. Below, Tam reflects on what drew her to Danaher and shares some of the “scary but exciting” changes she’s making, both in her role as Talent + Culture Strategy Program Manager and as a member of the LGBTQ+ Friends Steering Committee.

    What do you do at Pall?

    My title is Talent and Culture Strategy Program Manager, but informally we think of my role as Culture Lead. Most of what I work on is in the categories of inclusion, engagement and talent management—I try to bring those three things together holistically and think about all the ways we can align our business strategy and culture to better support our associates. Often, that’s pilot programs and other initiatives aimed at improving our processes. And on the D+I front, it’s woven into everything else. Companies have a tendency to treat inclusion as a separate project—you pop up during Pride Month or a heritage month, and then you go away. Instead, we want it to permeate the entire company culture. That’s what leads to long-term, sustainable change.

    Tell us about your background and why you joined the team.

    Early on in my career, I thought I’d be a teacher. I served in AmeriCorps’ City Year program right after high school and worked in a small elementary school in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which was an amazing opportunity. It was the first time I recognized that I could be a leader and that some of the difficult experiences I’d had in my life—I was born in Colombia and then adopted by white parents, so I grew up surrounded by people who didn’t look like me—could actually help me understand and show up for those students. I went to college thinking I’d teach elementary math, but I realized pretty quickly that I wanted to have a different kind of impact. So after graduation, I took a job at The Eli J. Segal Citizen Leadership Program, based at Brandeis University, running a leadership program for underrepresented and marginalized people who were early in their careers. After that, I decided to move to California to get my MBA at UC Berkeley, which is where I discovered Danaher—they were a sponsor and host for The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management’s orientation.

    I got to know Nicole Wormley, Kelley Washington, Cindy Castellanos and other members of the team and was basically smitten with the idea of this organization built on continuous improvement, so I asked for an interview. I was selected for a summer internship, and honestly, I didn’t think it was for me at first. I remember telling Michelle Gao, who was my mentor that summer, that I was only there to figure out if corporate America could change and support all people—especially those from marginalized backgrounds. But every new person I talked to here made me feel more hopeful. They wanted to help Danaher walk the walk, and the company had put a lot of people in leadership positions where they could make that happen. So I was really excited when they made me an offer to join full-time after graduation. I thought, “What better place to be than a company that has work to do and is eager to do it?”

    Can you give us an example of that work? What changes have you been able to make at Pall?

    We’re actually about to roll out a new policy deployment that’s designed to use our talent support systems and processes in a radically different way, which we hope will help us move the needle on the promotion and retention of associates from underrepresented groups. Our VP and Danaher Business System leader, David Koch, has been a strong advocate for doing more breakthrough thinking​​. He understands we can’t just tinker with this and that or do another mentoring program—the things every company in America is doing. So this project came out of what we call a President’s kaizen, which is a weeklong workshop that brings together folks from across Danaher.  We decided to give every Pall associate a career plan nomination (CPN), a method where managers can assess where they believe their associates’ careers could grow in five years through our company. We’ve always done them as part of our talent assessment processes, and they’re a big part of succession planning. But we didn’t do them for every role, and we kept them behind closed doors, which of course makes it much harder to identify and mitigate bias. So, one of the breakthroughs will be sharing the CPN of every associate with them to help plan their career.

    Of course, the impact won’t be limited to D+I; we’re in an aggressive talent market right now, and we hope seeing the time and effort we put into their development will encourage all associates to stay. But we’re looking at it through a D+I lens, as well, because our data tells us many associates from marginalized populations are in roles that didn’t previously get CPNs. This will drive equity by helping make sure they have every opportunity to grow.

    The new policy rolls out in the next couple of months, and we’ll be holding ourselves accountable—watching metrics on turnover, retention, engagement and promotions. It’s scary, like any big change. But it’s exciting, too, and I feel honored to have played a role.

    You’re a member of the steering committee for the LGBTQ + Friends associate resource group (ARG). What is that work like, and why did you want to get involved?

    Before I joined Danaher, I’d spent a significant amount of time advocating for underrepresented groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. I’m a member of all the ARGs. However, I was initially wary of the steering committee opportunity, and in fact, I had turned down visibility opportunities with the ARG multiple times. One part of that was not being comfortable yet owning my own sexual orientation; I’ve since recognized that the word “pansexual” is the best fit for me. Another part of it was that I wasn’t sure I was okay being on that stage. I didn’t want my identity to be part of my job title.

    But as I became more comfortable, I realized that if I wasn’t willing to do my own critical work, I would always have blind spots. So I jumped in. Now I’m the Intersectionality Lead for the committee, which is a nice way to mix an area where I can grow with an area where I feel much more confident.

    I believe being on the steering committee has also been a valuable way to support my day-to-day work, as it provides a window into what Danaher’s other operating companies (OpCos) are doing. With all the different OpCos, our processes sometimes aren’t as connected as they could be. I think the team has done a wonderful job of building a community of practice, allowing us to share ideas.

    Tell us about something you’ve learned since joining Pall.

    I think if you’d told me five years ago how data-driven my work would be, I would have laughed at you. Going into business school, I knew it was an area that was getting lots of attention, but I didn’t feel completely comfortable in it. So at Danaher, it became one of those continuous learning opportunities—this is a data-driven company, and it was something I needed to lean into and learn if I wanted change and accountability. Now, something that felt difficult and scary has become the best tool in my toolbox.

    We’re starting to track data on LGBTQ+ representation, for example, which is new for us. Previously, we only asked about the more normative identifiers like gender and race. But thanks to the work the steering committee did before I joined, we now have a field in Workday where associates can self-identify as gender nonbinary and a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

    We still have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem to work through, because many associates won’t feel safe to report that information, especially at first—yet gathering the data is part of how we push for more programs and initiatives that will increase psychological safety. But that’s where the rest of our work comes in, and why we make sure to get company leaders involved in things like the LGBTQ+ Summit and reverse mentoring. They can go back to their teams and help us create an environment where everyone feels safe being themselves.

    What are you looking forward to at Pall, both at the company level and in your own career?

    I’m very fortunate to be part of Danaher’s HR Development Program, which allows associates to rotate into different types of HR roles, and I am starting to think about my third progression. As much as I enjoy the D+I specialty, I do miss being in a broader role as an HR business partner, and I’d like to explore what it’s like to create change without a formal D+I title. I’m also curious about what it’s like at an OpCo of a different size.

    At the company level, I’m just excited to see what happens. I’ve talked a big game about the changes we’re making, but it’s a lot of try and see. We’re experimenting. So the feeling now is, “What’s going to work? How will we move forward? Will events like the summit help us make a strategic push toward more self-identification? When CPNs are visible and universal at Pall, how will that change our company?” And the results may not be limited to Pall—Danaher is watching as we pressure-test and iterate, and some of the things we try could end up being replicated for all 80,000 associates.

    In the three years I’ve been here, the opportunities I’ve had to work on high-visibility projects have already far surpassed anything I thought I’d get to do when I joined. I just want to keep that up for as long as Danaher keeps giving me the platform—and to throw down the ladder and make sure other folks from underrepresented backgrounds have a seat at the table, too.

    Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.