Some people know their career inclinations early on. Not Bryan Smith. When he joined Pall (a Danaher business) in 1996, he admits he was still figuring out what he wanted to be when he “grew up.” Today, 29 years later, Bryan channels his diverse experiences gained over three decades into his current role as Pall’s Chief Information Officer.
Here are some of his valuable learnings:
Danaher’s unique offerings gave Bryan Smith, Pall CIO, a unique and unexpected rise to leadership.
1. Career paths aren’t always a straight line.
Bryan started working for Pall in an unassuming role—production control at Pall’s Portsmouth (UK) manufacturing plant. Over time, his interest in IT slowly grew.
“I’ve always had an appreciation for solving problems and attention to detail, and through my early career roles, my interest in IT-related topics slowly developed. That, coupled with the explosion in IT, e-commerce and the internet, encouraged my interest in continually learning and developing in this field.”
Setting his sights on a career in IT, Bryan decided to go to college and gain formal IT qualifications. He moved into his first IT role in 2003, working for Pall’s Business Systems team. From there, Bryan worked in a variety of IT functions over the years supporting project management, digital transformation, HR systems and enterprise architecture. He also worked on some major projects, such as Pall’s global SAP rollout.
“When Pall joined the Danaher family in 2015, I had a number of opportunities to support other Danaher operating companies—all of which have been great stepping-stones for my career growth,” he said.
All of Bryan’s experience and leadership roles culminated in his promotion to Chief Innovation Officer in November 2023.
2. Danaher’s multi-business structure provides diverse career opportunities.
In Bryan’s experience, Danaher’s global footprint and common culture provide a unique opportunity to have a varied career with relatively low risk, as opposed to changing companies and the unknowns that can bring.
One of Bryan’s most memorable experiences was supporting the acquisition of Cytiva (a Danaher business) from GE in 2020, a highly complex and strategic transition.
“My role involved ensuring a seamless IT separation and integration, while maintaining business continuity—something I likely wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do if not for the unique way Danaher operates,” he said. “Danaher’s multi-business structure, cross-functional collaboration, and unique Danaher Business System (DBS) tools enabled me to navigate the challenges of integrating a multi-billion-dollar business, while working with teams across different Danaher operating companies to deliver a successful outcome. That experience reinforced the immense value of strategic IT leadership in large-scale transformations and the impact of Danaher’s unique business model in making such initiatives possible.”
Bryan and his wife visiting St. Pierre, Wales (UK).In his free time, Bryan enjoys traveling with his wife around Europe and the UK (shown here in London).
3. With DBS, everyone can accelerate innovation to make measurable improvements.
Danaher’s culture of continuous improvement means never settling for the status quo. At Pall, Bryan leverages DBS to challenge inefficiencies, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation. This mindset ensures that every project—whether optimizing IT service management or modernizing our SAP landscape—is approached with a focus on long-term sustainability and measurable impact.
“A great example of a way in which we used DBS tools to solve a real challenge was in improving our employee onboarding process, which was performing poorly and sometimes led to new hires waiting up to seven days to receive their IT equipment,” explained Bryan. “This delay negatively impacted their productivity and first impressions of the company.”
“Using DBS tools, we analyzed every step of the onboarding workflow to pinpoint the root causes of delays,” he said. “From there, we streamlined approvals, improved coordination between teams, and eliminated bottlenecks. As a result, we reduced lead times and now ensure 100% of new hires receive their IT equipment on day one, significantly enhancing their onboarding experience and early engagement.”
4. Even functions like IT contribute to meaningful global impact.
Danaher provides a unique environment where IT isn’t just a support function—it’s a strategic enabler of business success. The company’s commitment to continuous improvement through DBS ensures that innovation, efficiency, and problem-solving are deeply embedded in everyday work.
According to Bryan, “IT professionals looking for impactful careers will find that Danaher’s multi-business structure offers diverse opportunities for growth, cross-functional collaboration, and exposure to cutting-edge technologies.”
The secret to a thriving career is having access to the right opportunities. At any one time, Danaher has more than 1,400 open roles across multiple high-impact industries, with more than 15 businesses on six continents. Based on her own experience, Marcy Engelstein, VP of Marketing at Pall (a Danaher company), is a strong believer that Danaher is the place to find those opportunities.
During a recent discussion, Marcy shared how joining Danaher was a catalyst for her success.
What is your career background and how did you first come to Danaher?
I spent my first 10-12 years in academic research mostly around genetics and genomics topics. I worked at Harvard, MIT, and Mass General Hospital. I’m most proud of the fact that I was part of the global team that helped sequence the Human Genome in the 90s.
From there, I moved into an R&D leader role at Millipore Corporation (a competitor to Pall Life Sciences). I was there for 15 years, in various roles across R&D, project management and marketing before joining Beckman Coulter (a Danaher company) in 2014 as a Global Senior Marketing Manager for the DNA sequencing services business.
Tell us about your Danaher career evolution. What moves did you make between Danaher operating companies?
I have been with Danaher since 2014. I started at Beckman Coulter and then took a role at Danaher Diagnostics, then at Leica Biosystems, and finally at Pall, where I am today.
My first internal move came about in an interesting way. I met with a colleague who was starting up an innovation team at Danaher. Her team’s goal was to look at the impact of new technologies and market shifts over a longer horizon (about five to 20 years), to identify opportunities or threats to our business and help Danaher companies prepare for what may come in the future.
Her team’s objective was very intriguing to me, so much so that I suggested she would need to add marketing muscle to her very technology-heavy team, and when she was ready, she should reach out to me. That actually happened about a year later. I was in that Danaher role around three years and really enjoyed it; but I missed having a more near-term impact. With that in mind, I set my sights on returning to a marketing role with product and sales support responsibility. While facilitating a DBS (Danaher Business Systems) course, I met an associate who connected me to a role in Leica Biosystems (another Danaher company) as Marketing Director for Staining Reagents.
What prompted your move from Leica Biosystems to Pall?
While I was at Leica overseeing marketing for staining reagents, Pall reached out to me via Danaher Go (a program that helps Danaher hire from within). Pall’s Aerospace business unit was seeking its next head of Marketing. At first, I was skeptical since the Aerospace market was very unfamiliar to me. My career had been centered on life science and diagnostics businesses. What convinced me to join was the challenge and opportunity of the role, the passion and collaborative nature of the associates I met through the interview process and the comfort of knowing I was already familiar with the DBS tools and business processes I would need to excel. Plus, having been at a Pall competitor for so many years, I felt my knowledge in the filtration space would support my transition.
Marcy and family at their annual beach vacation.Marcy and her family on vacation exploring Hawaii in 2021.
How does Danaher make finding a new role easier?
Danaher offers the Danaher Go program which encourages associates to explore roles across Danaher confidentially. Through the program, associates can explore potential new roles and it has given me the confidence to explore new opportunities that stretch my skills. This, along with networking with other associates while facilitating Kaizens, helped me move between different roles at Beckman, but also helped in my move from Beckman to Leica Biosystems and then to Pall.
What’s next for you?
With upcoming retirement, and soon-to-be empty nesting, my husband and I plan to relocate from Massachusetts to the Colorado mountains. I have come to love hiking, skiing, biking—anything outdoors—which were not activities I participated in growing up. Our intent is to be outdoors every day, doing some fun and active endeavors.
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 came to Danaher, I’d spent a lot of time as an advocate for underrepresented groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. I’m a member of all the ARGs. But I was wary of the steering committee opportunity at first—in fact, I 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 started to get more comfortable, I realized that if I wasn’t willing to do my own critical work in terms of sexual orientation that I’d been willing to do in terms of race, I was always going to 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 help us to be intentional about who we’re spotlighting—when we hosted a summit recently, for example, I was part of the planning committee, and we were very thoughtful about diversity among our speakers in terms of race, gender, veteran status, disability and socioeconomics.
I think being on the steering committee has also been a great way to support my day-to-day work because it’s a window into what Danaher’s other operating companies (OpCos) are doing. With all of the different OpCos, sometimes our processes aren’t as connected as they could be, and I think the D+I team has done a wonderful job of building a community of practice so we can 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.
Ben Datson went from stocking shelves at a supermarket to joining Pall, where he’s worked his way from the factory floor to an engineering technician position. Below, see how his approach to embracing every opportunity led him to his current role—and toward a degree in manufacturing engineering.
You’re at the forefront of what Pall makes. Tell us what the company produces and about your role. What projects are you working on?
Pall makes hundreds of products that have to do with filtration and purification, and we have factories around the world. Here in Newquay, UK, we make medical products, and the main one now has to do with breathing filtration. If someone’s on a ventilator, for instance, there’s a filter between the machine and the patient. It stops anything from transferring back and forth. So when the machine is switched to a new patient, only the filter has to be replaced instead of taking the whole machine apart and cleaning it.
I’m a product engineering technician now, but I’ve probably worked in about 75% of the rooms here during my time on the shop floor. At the moment, I’m actually working on projects from a room I worked in for five years, so I’ve gained a lot of knowledge. I’ve got a nice blend at the moment between teaching others and learning new skills myself.
Our job is to help the shop floor resolve material issues. For example, if the raw materials come in from the suppliers and they’re the wrong shape or color, or they’re not reacting the way they should react, it’s up to us to investigate. Sometimes, it’s the machine setting, in which case we change our machines here on-site. Or it could be the supplier has made changes that affect how the material runs in our machines.
Can you share your journey from the shop floor to a management role?
Six years ago, I was working in a supermarket, stocking shelves, without a lot of career prospects. I felt like I had to do something. Another guy I was working with at the store was feeling the same way, and he went to Pall first. I think he’d been here for about three or four months when he convinced me to give it a go.
When you’re on the shop floor, you may wonder why management can’t change a process. It’s not until you come upstairs and see how much paperwork, regulations, and signoffs you need to be able to change something small that you understand. Coming from the shop floor means I have an understanding of what the people on the floor are thinking. Having that crossover is invaluable, really.
We use DBS for almost every meeting, whatever department you work in, which means everyone can go to every meeting and know how it will run. Everyone knows what the graphs are showing. Everyone knows that red and green days show if you hit a target or not.
Our DBS boards are like a grid, so anyone should be able to walk up to a board, see why it’s red, and know what action is in place to make it green again. It really depends on what metric you’re looking at. If it’s output, maybe you need to run overtime to catch up. Maybe you need to get more staff in.
For example, there are milestones for every project. That could mean if you need to make 1,000 of a product a day and you made 900, that’s a red day. We then have a 24-hour action to get back to a green day. If it can’t be resolved in 24 hours, there’s a permanent action. So if something extreme like a machine blowing up requires the permanent action of bringing in a new machine, the success links to that single red day in production even though it’s part of a six-month project.
Once you learn how DBS works, it’s really useful. When we have engineers off, we can cover each other’s areas. When you’re on the shop floor, your main focus is to keep the machine running, but up here in Product Engineering, you actually see what can happen if a procedure isn’t followed, which is quite eye-opening. When you see the whole picture, then you actually understand why each part of the process needs to be controlled strictly.
What does the future hold for your work at Pall?
As part of my new role, Pall is putting me through an HND (Higher National Diploma). It’s remote learning, which means I can work my 39 hours a week and study at home. Eventually, I’ll have a foundation degree in manufacturing engineering.
I’ve finished the engineering and mathematics part, and I found that interesting, so it didn’t really feel like work. Now I’m learning about material properties and electromagnetism.
The plan now is to complete the HND and, hopefully, go to a full degree. I’d like to specialize in something that we can use here at Pall. About 80% of our products are made from plastics, so something like plastic molding techniques or the molecular structure of plastic would be useful. I want to continue progressing.
