Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to following the Gone, a podcast for Schreyer Scholars, bringing you mentoring on demand. I'm your host, Shawn Goheen, and our guest today, joining us here today at University park, all the way from Colorado, California, Georgia, really all over the place, 1986 engineering graduate Greg Lussier. He's most recently the founder, chairman and CEO of Corza Health. Greg, thanks so much for joining us. And more importantly, congrats on being our sixth Schreyer Scholar alum to be named a distinguished alumni here at Penn State.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Shawn, great to be here and look forward to the time together.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I know what brought you here today as we record this, but what brought you to Penn State as a student of all the great choices that you could have made back when, when you were applying for college?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Well, grew up here in Pennsylvania. I had two older sisters that went to Penn State, and so I was going to Penn State. That was the choice right there, Sean.
You know how it was. Sometimes you don't have a lot of alternatives, and that's what the choice was for us.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: So you were a Penn State family then. Where. Where was home for you growing up?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: We grew up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, just.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Outside of Philadelphia, like so many of our scholars and Penn Staters, the proverbial outside of Philadelphia, but, you know, definitely the suburbs, just like me.
So when you were here, how did you end up in what was then the University Scholars Program?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: I had. I was in the College of Engineering as an industrial engineer and in my junior year. Wasn't called Schreier's Honors College then. It was just, we're going to have an honors college, and I was a pretty good student at the time. And the department head said you should become one of our first scholars. And that's how it all started.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Very nice. So what made you want to say yes to that? Like, you're taking on all this extra work. You're an ie. Every engineering major is a lot of work. So what incentivized you to say yes to that?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Oh, Shawn, I grew up in a pretty blue collar area, and I was all about, I'm going to do everything possible I can to ultimately succeed, whatever that meant at the time. And so if somebody said, you can be in a honors college, I'm all in.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Awesome. So in addition to being a scholar, though, what else were you involved in on campus? Because a hallmark of a university scholar, a Schreyer scholar, is that you just say yes to things. Right. And I had the pleasure of meeting your wife a little bit earlier this Morning. And she was saying that you're never going to retire, so you have that instinct. But tell us about what was 20 year old Greg like in clubs and studying abroad and all the different opportunities that you had as a student.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Well, back then we didn't really have study abroad and you know, the Greek life was pretty small here at Penn State even then. And so for me it was school weekends, fun and lots of football games and, you know, just fully enjoying an incredible campus that we all know so well.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: I know you're a big football fan. What was the best game that you got to attend during that period when we were winning national championships?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Well, the problem is I can't remember the games that far back, but my best game ever actually was more recently was that quadruple overtime against Michigan. That is still one of the best games ever.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: I was there too. And I will certainly echo you on that one, Greg, but obviously not everything is going out on a weekend, going to football games and enjoying the student life here. Being a scholar, there is a thesis, and I know that's evolved over time. We were talking about that before we hit record. But tell us about what your research and thesis experience was like as an early scholar.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: The program at that time in industrial engineering centered a lot around manufacturing, manufacturing cost accounting, manufacturing efficiencies, how to optimize certain processes, and the honors programs then centered on those kind of core manufacturing disciplines. So I found it just fantastic because for me, I've always been about curiosity and then improvement, and industrial engineering captures a lot of that. And the honors college programs just took it to the next level.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Well, Greg, the way you just described that, I think I missed my calling as an industrial engineer. I love that description of it.
So how did you leverage your thesis experience researching manufacturing things in your career?
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Well, let's see. You know, my first job, actually real job in business was as a production foreman. I wanted to manage people. I asked to be put on a shift in a factory somewhere in the United States, and I got my wish and I was on a second shift managing people at a big corrugated packaging plant. And I learned more in that nine months than I probably learned in any other single experience in my entire life on people and processes and how to handle crisis. And it was marvelous, actually.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Was there any particular instance of something that didn't go right and how you had to handle solving that?
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Well, you know what those of us who have been in careers a long time know, it's all about making people get oriented, working together towards a common purpose. And Then doing it. And even in production environments, you've got to do that each and every day. And I found I had a pretty good knack at reading people, at understanding them at their level and then getting them to do what had to be done. And that for me was a real eye opener very early in my career. Like, not too bad at this.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Well, let's take a quick step back.
You know, obviously if you're a student watching this, whether you're looking for internships or that first job, that's something that's always on your mind as a student. How did you go about finding your first job at that corrugated manufacturing plant? And how does that compare to what you're seeing the new grads here in the 2020s and advice that you can take from both the students you're hiring now, straight out of college, down in your company versus your experience?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: You bet.
When I graduated here, I think I was.
We'll have to look it up. I think I was the second best student in the College of Engineering. Wasn't number one. I remember who number one was. But I was a darn good student. And so I had job offers to be much more academic. For example, Bell Labs. So I went to go look at Bell Labs, the famous Bell Labs, to be a researcher. And as I was walking around in that incredible facility, I just said, this is not speaking to me. I'm not that type of person. And so I pivoted 180 degrees. I joined International Paper, who hadn't hired a college grad in a long time, a venerable old forest products company. And I had a great run for two years, including that running a corrugated shift at one of their factories in the United States. States. I wanted to apply engineering into the world of business. And that gave me a chance to do it.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Awesome.
Now you kind of paused out of the workforce for a little bit to go to B school. And not just anyone, but you ended up going to one of the best ones at Harvard. How did you decide to make that? That's a big decision, to step out of a full time paycheck and go back to school. Even as great a program as Harvard. So how did that, I guess, walk us through your decision making process because that's something a lot of students are probably going to think about in their coming out of Penn State or a few years into their career as well.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Yeah, well, as I said, I realized early on that I would probably make a career in industry more towards the business side. And so it made me think about getting a master's degree and then making that master's degree in business.
Now, only if you've gone to Stanford, would you say that Harvard maybe is number one. But, you know, if you go to Harvard, it is number one. But I only just say that tongue in cheek because I made a vow to myself that I would only step out of the workforce and go to a program like a Harvard if I could get into a Harvard or a Stanford. And fortunately, I was very lucky I got into Harvard. And I was also very fortunate because my lovely wife, who I had just gotten married to, was in the workforce and she was going to be able to help support. Support us so we could make it all work financially.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: And that's a common theme that's come up on different episodes is that importance of no matter what your career is finding a partner that can be helpful for you, no matter what that looks like.
How did you two meet?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: We met senior year of High School, 40 some years ago at the senior prom. She was my date. She was a pretty good one and it seems to have worked out pretty well.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Nice.
So, Greg, when we get to your current career, it's all in life sciences, biotech, all these just space age technologies. But you mentioned you started off at International Paper. I'm going to get this wrong, but Morrison Knudsen.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Knudsen, Knudsen, yeah.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: So I learned something new today, how to pronounce that. And then also a ge, which I think is a name that we all probably know and can easily pronounce. How have those experiences influenced your perspectives in the biotech industry? That has been the bulk of your career.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Kind of like what happened when I left Penn State when I was probably going to join Bell Labs, but I pivoted to International Paper. I also had a chance to go work at GE at a Harvard business school. But at the last minute I was wooed to go work for Morrison Knudsen in Boise, Idaho. Going from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Boise, Idaho was a shock for me. It was a real shock for my wife, Marilena.
But I went there because it was being run by a person who in this day and age people wouldn't know, but his name was Bill Agee. He was a person on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine. And he recruited five of us to join this company, which was competitor to Bechtel, Big construction projects all over the world, and help him transform the company. For me, that was very intoxicating to go do that. And it was a little exotic to be in Boise. And I say life is an adventure. And that was an adventure.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Well, one of those adventures and not to knock on Boise. I hear it's a great place. Like it's a really fun place now here in the 2020s to go check out.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Very different 30 some years ago, I can assure you.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Just like State college. You know, we were talking earlier, Greg, about all the high rises and the. We have more grocery stores than when you were students. So you know, these small towns do evolve, right?
[00:11:15] Speaker B: They do now.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: It's one thing to live in Boise, it's a whole other, if I did my research correctly, that you lived in Jakarta.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: No. Yeah, I saw that on the time. I spent a lot of time in Indonesia.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Tell us about that. Like what advice do you have for students? Whether it's just to study abroad, a maymester a whole semester, or if they have the opportunity to do a long stint or even become an expat and live abroad?
[00:11:37] Speaker B: You bet.
So Indonesia General Electric had a locomotive assembly plant in the country. And so we would go back and forth quite frequently with that factory and getting the Indonesians to be able to make modern locomotives. Lovely country and beautiful people.
Two of our children have done study abroad of the three we have, and it's just such a great, incredible experience that they had. In fact, our oldest met his future wife there and now they have two kids.
To me, I think it's such a nice way to augment a college education these days. And I'm jealous I wasn't able to do it back in the day.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Well, for our Shire scholars, you know, obviously global perspective is a big part of our mission statement. So if you do want to study abroad, whether it's in Indonesia, Ireland or anywhere in between, come talk to us. We have funding available so that you can make the most of that.
So Greg, you worked with paper, you worked with trains.
How did you get into the biotech medical devices, however you want to phrase the industries that you're in, from those big industrial to sometimes microscopic technologies.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: This is a story where little brief moments of conversation can change your entire life's direction. I was running a business for the railroading part of GE in the 90s. It was a really fast growing kind of interesting software, electronics, part of railroading to control trains using gps, which by the way, GPS at the time was just getting on the scene.
Our chairman and CEO Jack Welch loved what we were doing. And one day he literally called me out of the blue and said, you know what you're doing to make things more optimized in railroading should happen in hospitals. You're going to go to GE Medical Systems and work for our new leader there and help him figure it all out. And that is literally how I got into the healthcare field a long time ago, and I've never looked back. To me, the medical field, when it meets business, is the most interesting thing in the world.
Goes back to this point of curiosity. It just never stops innovating and changing. And I couldn't have been more lucky to have that phone conversation.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: And obviously, if you're a business student, you probably have heard of Jack Welch. Maybe if you watch 30 Rock, you may have heard of Jack Welch, but definitely look him up. I think there's probably some more interesting stories around that.
But you know Greg, he was the head honcho at GE over all the different components. And it's one thing to lead a team within an organization, it's a whole other to lead the entire organization, but that's what you ended up doing for a couple different companies. How did you make that transition to go from a team leader to the company leader? And if you can frame it in a way that's aimed at our current students who might be running their THON committee in their fraternity, another club on their campus, whether it's at University park or across the Commonwealth and you know, or as they get into early career roles when they're starting to manage people. Going back to something you were talking about earlier and wanting to lead people, whether it's a whole organization or as the foreman on the floor.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I love this question and I'll frame the question even more. So it's seemingly these days because there's so many opportunities that young people have coming out of college where they can either go work for an established company or pursue their dream and do a startup. And of course, being entrepreneurial and being an entrepreneurial is intoxicating. It's interesting.
But the advice I give young people is go work for a more established company for a little while, go see how things work, go see how people lead and learn different styles from them accordingly and make your own style, then get developed. If you never have that formative experience, I don't know how you ultimately can become a great leader fast enough in this world that we live in today. So for me, working at GE was a great experience. I had great mentors in all the different stops I had. And with each one of them, I picked up something that I put into my repertoire and it made me just that much of a better leader.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Absolutely. And sometimes you can really gain some leadership. Insight by watching what you do, like from your managers and superiors and organizations, and sometimes is what you would say, hey, I would do this differently. Do you have any examples? You don't have to name names, but do you have any examples of one or the other on leaders that influenced you and how you approach it?
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Oh, most certainly. I mean, let's go back to Jack Welch. How did he run such a sprawling conglomerate at the time? Incredibly successfully. And the way he did it was through utter clarity. He was a tough leader. There was never ambiguity of what he wanted, and it made the organization run well. Now, in today's day and age, it might be considered too draconian, too dictatorial, but at the time, it worked really well for everybody. And I actually learned a little bit of that style, too, sometimes to my detriment. And I carried that into my early CEO career at Life Technologies that I had to moderate over time. You just couldn't do what you did at GE in a different environment. So learning as well, then how your leadership gets adopted and adapted in different environments is another important lesson.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Now you go the GE Healthcare, and then you transition over to Life Technologies. And again, you were really focused on different elements. And Jack calls you, says, hey, I want you to do this for medicine.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: So that first company, they were focused on lab equipment and tests and maybe even things that our students are using in the research lab.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: They better be. Yeah.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: And you had this background in industrial engineering as opposed to biomedical engineering. How did you bring yourself up to speed on those areas and become at least true, kind of a coffee table expert, if you will, on those, when that wasn't your background, but so that you could effectively lead and communicate with your team?
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Yeah. This earlier example I gave, where we went from railroading to the medical healthcare field required a lot of learning on my part in and of itself. And when I was interviewing to become the chairman and CEO of invitrogen, which we later renamed Life Technologies, I said to the board, I said, don't hire me for what I know. Hire me for how fast I can learn. And I spent a lot of time explaining to the board different instances where I had to learn entirely new skills, entirely new technologies, and apply them quickly. And I said, that's the type of leader you want. Because, look, everything is changing fast these days. And so it doesn't really matter what you know today. It's all about, will you learn what you need to know tomorrow? And that's how I've always thought about these questions.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: I think that's really solid advice. And I think that's going to end up being a little Instagram reel that clip. All right, so some of our students you talked about, like, go spend time at a known company before going into a startup. But whether it's two people or 200,000 employees, there's. There's always a possibility for growth, but also for failure. Mergers, acquisitions. Companies aren't static. Right, Right. So your company was bought by Thermo Fisher, which is a huge player in biggest in the world biotech space. Right. How did you know that that was the right move for not just you, but for your company, your employees, your investors, your customers, even. That's a big decision. Walk us through your thought process. Cause that's not an overnight thing.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: I had been running the company for a long time, going on 11 years.
I had a passion for that business. I loved it. But we had done a lot of acquisitions to build Life technologies, well over 50 major acquisitions, putting them all together.
And when I looked forward, I envisioned a company like Thermo Fisher Scientific getting created. And to the credit of those executives that over the course of those many years, created their business, I thought in the end, if we combined with them, that would create a world beater. And I was 100% right on that. It was great for the employees, who, by the way, are in the upper echelons of Thermo Fisher around the world today. It was phenomenal for our shareholders. We outdid the S&P 503X. And in the end, I think that company, Thermo Fisher, just makes that much more of an impact on the world than we could have as Life Technologies.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: So essentially just a basic cost benefit analysis. They could do it better than.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Well, the combination could do it better than anybody.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: You know, and the other thing, Sean, I would just say I was 50 years old when we sold that business. I also have tried to look at careers chapters in a book. I think there's so many examples where leaders stay on too long and they in the end, wear out their welcome mat. And I didn't want to be that person. I wanted this chapter to be done. And I'm really, as I look backwards, I think it was the right call.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Excellent. Now, the next chapter in your story, Greg, was a company called NuVasive. And from what I could tell, they were focused on spinal care and spinal surgery. So going from the lab equipment kind of out of the, you know, in the different part of the hospital to the operating room is where you were focused. So why did you say yes to that when presumably you probably could have enjoyed a really nice early retirement.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, as my wife Marilyna says, I'll never retire. I had joined the board of NuVasive after we sold Life Technologies.
We then had a ethical issue at the board level with our chairman and CEO, and ultimately we needed to have that individual depart.
And the board said, would you step in on a temporary basis to be the chairman and CEO? The company was in San Diego, where we lived full time at the time. And so I stepped in and did it for a couple of years. I stepped back out after about two years and remained chairman for many more years after that, handing the baton to a really great young leader.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Awesome. And if you want a really good example of how to really positively talk about maybe not the best situation, go back and rewind like the last minute of this clip and re listen to what Greg, how you described that. That was really, really nice way to describe something that maybe probably wasn't the most.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: It was a little more tawdry than that, as they say.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: But yep, don't burn bridges. Right?
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Don't burn bridges. And you know what? Everybody has a life to lead. Let's treat them with respect.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Absolutely.
So your current role at Corza is more focused on the business strategies, even more so than your two previous CEO roles, which obviously, of course, is the job of a CEO. So how do you pull in not only your past business experience and training as an engineer in building out these healthcare companies, because your company more or less makes companies, right? Is that a fair description?
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Corza Medical, the first big company we've created so far is about a half a billion in size, now has just under 4,000 employees, is very global. And the company got created by buying two companies simultaneously, putting them together, and then growing it organically over the last five years. And it has been the most fun, creative, constructive process I've had in a long time. We did one thing really smart. Very early on we went out and we talked to surgeons around the world and we said, what are you happy about and unhappy about with some of the things you need to do a surgery each and every day in that operating room? And we got back tons of comments and just pleas for like, could you fix this? And that created for us the roadmap to go buy these companies, build out the company as we are. And we have had more fun building this Corza Medical business than I've had in a very long time.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Well, I'm sure your Harvard professors would be very glad that you listened from day one. Because one of the earliest things you can learn in business is just listen to your customers. They tell you what they need. So if you actually tune your ear in and listen, you can be very successful.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: And so many companies don't listen very well or they'll get a customer and then they won't care for them very well. And as we all know, because we're consumers, the little things matter in a big way. And that's really the philosophy we have. Of course, a medical just be insanely focused on the customer every day.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Yep. You know what they say when you assume things, right?
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Right. But we won't spell it out.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Don't do that.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: I don't want the little E on on Apple podcasts. So we're not going to do that. Now, Greg, you serve on several boards for both for profit companies and for nonprofit institutions. And you've talked about being a CEO and a chairperson. Sometimes you're both, sometimes you're one, but not the other. Can you walk us through that distinction? Especially for those engineering majors who maybe haven't had any classes up in smeal to help or even just for the general person can be confusing. How does these two parts of a company fit in together?
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. And in fact, I'd add a third element. Just being a board member, being a CEO and as you said, a chairperson. And they each have a distinctive role and responsibility. I'll just quickly give you my distinction. A chairperson is all about making sure that you have the right CEO, the right strategy, and the right people on the board, and that the three of those things come together in the right chemistry, if you will, so that you're not having contention and you're moving forward as an organization. The CEO runs the business day in, day out. They get the 200 emails every day that they got to go figure out.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Just 200.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And so they're running the minute to minute game plans for the business, whereas the chairperson is more like quarters, half years, years, years as they go. And then if a board member. Think of yourself as the most discerning fan of a sports team imaginable and you're there watching it every four or five times a year and you're giving direct feedback on what they need to do to get that sports team to be ever more high performing very different roles and responsibilities.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: It's funny that you use the sports analogy because literally in my head I was trying to processing this as like the GM and the head coach for a football team. I'm imagining a lot of the Students watching this are either Eagles or Steelers fans. And thinking about Howie and Nick, for example, with the Eagles, you're from outside of Philly, so is that a fair, fair statement? Summary of that?
[00:26:47] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Awesome.
So these are kind of all time consuming responsibilities and you've graciously come back to Penn State this weekend to do some things here. But how do you balance all of these commitments? Because I think that's a hallmark for Schreier Scholars, whether you graduated in 2026 for our current students or 1986 is just saying yes to things and trying to balance that and the time management. So how do you find time? You've mentioned grandkids, your kids. I know one is a Penn State alum himself. Right. So walk us through your time management and work life balance as a CEO, as a chairperson.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Well, first of all, my wife would say I don't get it right very often. All right, so I'll fully acknowledge her and, and ask for forgiveness. And I do have a propensity to say yes to a lot of things, so there's that.
I'm going to be a bit of a spoiler alert though, which is I often get asked the question about work life balance. And I often say to people, look, if you want to get well ahead in your career, that's a question you really can't answer very effectively. And in my early or middle parts of my career, I was gone a lot.
It was a sacrifice I made and I applied a lot of my effort to the work to get ahead. And I used to just tell people and I told myself, look, if I work harder and I'm good at what I do, I will probably be better off than somebody who didn't work as hard. And that's just kind of basic, kind of math, right? So, you know, Now I'm age 60, I'm definitely not wanting to say yes as much to the many things I used to. And so I've become much more discerning about what I do say yes to. I probably should have done that a little earlier in my career, but, you know, you don't get to live backwards.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Are there any going back to that, like cost benefit, risk analysis? What are the factors that you go, okay, I want to check these boxes in order to say yes.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Such a great question.
What I look at when I'm thinking about work commitments is a portfolio. And so in terms of those box to be checked, there are times when you want to take on more venture type things, entrepreneurial things that are very risky. And if you have some openings in your schedule that you feel like that would be the right thing to do, then I'll do that. If you have too many of those, then it's just nerve wracking. Because, look, early stage companies are roller coasters. It's good to balance them off with more traditional, stable, established enterprises. And I've got them in my portfolio too. And they're a lot of fun because they're bigger companies that you can run different plays with in terms of different innovations, different expansion ideas and the like. So having that balance between those two extremes is how I think about how I want to use my time.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Awesome.
So, Greg, in doing my research, it's very clear that the word excellence is very important to you. How can scholars define that word for themselves regardless of their major and career, where metrics for success can vary from being a CEO to a social worker or anything else in between?
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Look, excellence has nothing to do with your chosen profession. It has everything to do with what's inside of you. And the number one thing I look for when I meet people and I interview people is how passionate are they about becoming that better version of themselves. And I specifically will ask questions about when they've had failures, how they learned from them, when they've had successes that they shouldn't have got, but they did, and understanding the dimensionality of the individual and how attuned they are to becoming that better version of themselves.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Excellent.
In the interest of making sure that we have an excellent interview here, what are the questions or topics that we should have talked about in our discussion that I should have asked, but because I'm not a biotech expert, I'm not a CEO, I just didn't think to ask or another way, what are the kind of questions you get from maybe interns, junior employees, mentees, or even your children?
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's two areas of questions we should talk about before we let each other go. The first one is I do get asked a lot of questions about, you know, there's not as much opportunity now as when you were coming out of college. And I have to just totally, totally debunk that there is more opportunity now for young people coming out of Penn State than ever before.
When you look at the rate of innovation going on in our world, whether it's AI, whether it's going in my world, medical sciences keep going on picking other things.
The endless possibilities keep coming to me and they should be coming to the younger people coming out of Penn State even more than me. And so I just say like, that is not true. And you should be more bullish, confident, and just excited about the next 40 years of your career. The second one is even more important.
A lot of people say to me, you know, the workplace has all new rules, and there's all new kind of things that matter. And actually, as I thought about that, it has not changed one bit in a thousand years.
You know, if you work hard, you'll probably get ahead. If you treat people with respect, they're going to like you, and they're going to then consider you. And the golden rule applies as always. And I, you know, I say to people, I don't think actually anything has changed. It's just evermore. You've got to be committed to the fundamentals about what it takes to be successful interpersonally and in a career. And you'll find everything just works out fine.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Awesome.
So, Greg, we're at the last chapter of our conversation today, and I'm gonna ask you a series of reflection questions because this is the honors college. So we're diving a little bit deeper here. Right. This is your chance to brag, whether it's career, family, both somewhere in between. But what is your biggest success to date?
[00:33:06] Speaker B: My biggest success is my family. My wife of 36 years, our three kids that are amazing and new, and their spouses and our two grandkids and another one on the way.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Awesome.
On the flip side, though, Greg, what would you say is the biggest transformational learning moment or mistake that you've made in your career, but more importantly, what you learned from that to better yourself in that pursuit of excellence, to use your perspective there?
[00:33:36] Speaker B: I'll also give my wife credit on this one. I struggled mightily thinking about leaving ge. I was having a great run there. I had a great career. I loved the company. And I got then this chance to move to San Diego and build what then became Life Technologies. And at the last minute, I was going to renege on the offer and go back and be at ge And I remember waking up one morning just fraught with indecision. And Marilena said to me, you are crazy. If you don't go do this, you will regret it forever. And it was the best piece of advice. Kind of like that Jack Welch call. Just that one moment of conversation changed the entire direction of our lives.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Have you ever told her that before?
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Never.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Well, you got to hear it now. She's off camera watching.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: I'm running major brownie points right now.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Excellent. Well, I'm happy I could help.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Thank you, Sean.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: So how do you approach mentorship, you've had a very successful career. You've probably had some great mentors. You've also probably mentored quite a few behind you. What can students do to seek out those opportunities and make the most of those relationships throughout their career?
[00:34:46] Speaker B: As I said earlier, you've got to work for individuals. You've got to seek out those individuals that will be exemplars of leadership, and it will be so important for you in order to develop who you are.
And so I try to give back a lot to people.
It's one of the things I feel an obligation to do, whether it's in my own company or beyond. Just helping people think through choices they have to make because it's not easy all the time to figure out which way to go.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Excellent. Are there any professors or friends from either your days on campus or your time after Penn as a volunteer and as a donor that you want to give a shout out to?
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Dr. So Dr. Alan Soyster, who ran the industrial engineering department when I was here, was just a fantastic professor mentor. He helped me get into Harvard Business School. He may not remember that, but he made a difference in my life.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Excellent.
Greg, as we're wrapping up our time, what is just the final piece of advice that you would want to leave with scholars or young alumni that are watching that hasn't already come up every day?
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Get up and go for it. The world is incredible. There's so much amazing things that you can go do, and you must go do it.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: So if a scholar watched this and they want to pick your brain more, given your expertise in engineering and in business, what's the best way that they could try and connect with you?
[00:36:23] Speaker B: We'll give them my email and they can email me and I'll respond accordingly.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Perfect. So you can reach out to us in the Honors Collegecholaralumnicsu.edu, and we'll connect you.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: And I'm sure you're also a great follow on LinkedIn too.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: That I am.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: And finally, Greg, this is going to be the hardest question I asked you today. So be prepared. If you were a flavor of Berkey creamery ice cream, which I think from where we're sitting here in the beautiful new Engineering Innovation Design building on West Hampton campus is probably a solid hour walk away, it feels like over here, which would you be? And most importantly, as a scholar alum, Greg, why would you be that flavor? Well, don't just give me your favorite, but give me the why you would be.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: No, easy, easy. Here, look. Most of the time. I'm a vanilla guy, but the creamery has the most amazing flavors ever. And I like cookie dough. And I like cookie dough for this reason because it's mostly kind of vanilla, which is my go to. But every once in a while you bite into that morsel of goodness. It's just an explosion of flavor and you're like, darn, that's good.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: That is a great choice. And somebody told me not too long ago that they actually put the cookie dough flavoring in the ice cream as well, which is why the one here is so good. So it's not just the chunks, but it's also like the flavoring.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: It's just infused through it. We gotta go there this excellent right.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Into the ice cream.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Love that.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Well, Greg, thank you so much for your time and sharing some really awesome insights from your career. Tried to distill down 30 years into just over 30 minutes here. Before I let you have the last word, for those of you watching, if you're watching the video version, make sure you subscribe. Like, leave a comment. And if you're engaging with us on the audio app on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening, make sure you subscribe. Subscribe or follow whatever verb they use on that app and leave us a rating if you can. So, Greg, I'm going to let you have the last word here before we end our conversation.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Schreier's Honors College is absolutely an amazing program and all of you who are in it, you are so darn lucky to be part of that. And I just wish you the very best success.
