2021 Summit Trailer

Summit trailer

A short preview of our 2021 Leadership in the Age of Personalization summit, Individuality Unleashed, held October 21, 2021 in Las Vegas and online with host LightSpeed VT. The day moved through three parts, assess, interrupt and pivot, with students, patients, employees and executives from corporate, healthcare and higher education.

Part 1: Assess (Trailer)

Glenn Llopis

Assess is the first of the three habits I asked our 2021 audience to practice. In my opening remarks I described it as investigating where you are unknowingly suppressing individuality, and the only way to find out is to listen directly to the employees, students and patients you serve. This short segment introduces the first part of the summit, where students and patients told us what they wish we knew about them.

Individuality Unleashed

Glenn Llopis

I opened the 2021 summit by naming what the pandemic and social unrest had exposed: the collapse of command-and-control standardization. Leaders know the balance of power has shifted toward the individual, and many don't know what to do about it. People aren't worn out by change itself, I argued, but by having change forced on them with no input. I introduced the day's three habits, assess, interrupt and pivot, and revisited a line from my first book.

The New Purpose of Education

Pete Baron

Recorded when Pete Baron was a junior in the honors program at Fairfield University. I asked Pete what higher education is for, and he said its purpose has moved from handing over content to teaching students how to think, question and reflect. He wants professors to act as guides rather than lecturers. After watching our 2020 virtual summit, Pete designed his own interdisciplinary major around one question: whether socioeconomic inequities are inevitable or can be avoided.

Social Media and DE&I Amongst the Youth

Brielle Lubin

Recorded when Brielle Lubin was a 10th grader at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. Brielle opens with a poem she wrote for the summit, then recalls the summer of 2020 on Instagram, when classmates felt that not reposting meant holding the wrong opinion. It left her doubting her own morality. She leads two student clubs and has seen well-meant D&I clubs still make outsiders feel unwelcome. Her answer is a basic one: we have to relearn how to listen.

The Battle to Be Seen and Heard

Kayla Redig

Kayla Redig was diagnosed with breast cancer at 24 and scheduled for chemo alongside women in their 50s and 60s because they shared a diagnosis. She no longer fit with her peers outside the hospital, and didn't belong inside it either. She turned treatment days into themed parties with friends, yet when survivorship brought panic, an oncologist told her they had saved her life and she should move on. She asks providers to see the person behind the chart.

Addressing Systemic Exclusion in Healthcare

Kawana Williams

Kawana Williams was diagnosed with stage 1C ovarian cancer at 23 while finishing her studies at Fisk University. She learned after surgery how many organs had been removed, was never asked whether she wanted chemotherapy, and was offered no mental health support when treatment ended. As an African American woman with a cancer rarely seen in her demographic, she believes nobody looked closer. She now challenges researchers to loosen clinical trial inclusion criteria so patients like her are counted.

Sit in Discomfort and Recognize Your Privileges

Meaghan Gilhooly

Dr. Meaghan Gilhooly told me that what keeps her up at night is turnover, and she traces it to how organizations reward the what and ignore the how. A veterinarian at Banfield Pet Hospital who leads its Women of Banfield group, she argued that we lead with diversity when we should solve for inclusion, and that big companies say no to anything they can't scale. Her own group dropped its first slogan once members likened it to Mary Kay.

The Importance of Achieving Alignment in DE&I

Frank Ross

Frank Ross, who leads cybersecurity engineering and operations at General Mills, believes our D&I efforts reuse old, standardized tools and leave out the people they mean to help. When people hear the word diversity, he said, many start asking whether they're included at all. His answer is to start with inclusion. After George Floyd's death, Frank and four General Mills colleagues formed a nonprofit that sends uplifting books with BIPOC characters to young children and their families.

Navigating Between Inclusion and Individualism

Ivy Nguyen

Ivy Nguyen chose the name Ivy when she became a U.S. citizen, after years of people mispronouncing and teasing her given name. She wanted something easy for everyone else. Years later, watching her own children adapt to fit in, she began asking whether she was modeling the right behavior. Ivy, who leads enterprise resilience at General Mills, warned that categories and boxes are the easy way out, and that no one should have to pick a group to feel included.

Part 2: Interrupt (Trailer)

Glenn Llopis

Interrupt is the second habit, and it means stopping the habits and systems that suppress people. After a morning of hearing from students, patients and employees, I turned the summit toward our metrics and skills, asking where they hold people back and challenging our assumptions about who belongs where, doing what and how. This segment opens that second part of the day, starting with a panel on activating capacity in a hybrid environment.

Lifestyle-Driven Careers

Guilherme Oliveira

Guilherme Oliveira had worked remotely for GLLG for six years, much of it from Brazil, when he gave this talk on returning to the office. He shared research showing many workers fear the return will hurt their mental health, and the story of a friend who thrived remotely but now cries in the office bathroom. His own best ideas, he said, come while surfing and traveling. He urged companies to plan for lifestyle-driven careers rather than one standard benefits package.

The Workplace Beyond Work

Joe Moscola

Joe Moscola leads human resources, IT, real estate and shared services at Northwell Health, New York State's largest private employer. When his teams were asked what they needed for hybrid work, the answer was a little of everything, with options. In six months Northwell built a flexible workspace where every wall is writable and nearly every piece of furniture moves. Staff gave back office space to get it, and that group now reports Northwell's highest engagement.

Welcome to the Hybrid World

Kristin Gwinner

Kristin Gwinner, chief human resources officer at Chico's FAS, told me how she worked through hybrid work role by role. She asked each leader what had worked and what hadn't, then asked each associate what they preferred. She believes leaders often resist new ways of working out of fear and a lack of trust. She also shared a moment with her father, married over 60 years, who insisted on kissing his wife goodbye before she left.

Questioning Absolutes to Evolve

Brad Williams

Brad Williams, president of the El Centro campus at Dallas College, argued that compliance thinking keeps people focused on finishing tasks when the real currency is ideas. He wants leaders to build safety, trust and hope so people can co-create where the organization goes. When campuses went remote, he said, decisions made in a vacuum would have been foolish. He illustrated co-design with a story about refilling a spilled gallon with water so his four-year-old daughter could practice pouring.

Healthcare Data in the Age of Personalization

Mike Nash

Mike Nash, co-founder and CEO of a Seattle health data company working within Providence, believes healthcare's next era has to belong to the patient. The one constant across every doctor visit and insurance claim is the individual, he said, yet the records sit with everyone else. COVID made that plain when most people could prove vaccination only with a paper card. He sees the 21st Century Cures Act as a start and cost transparency as the push patients need.

Supply Chain as a Growth Strategy

Lou Mercado

Lou Mercado, chief global supply chain officer at 99 Cents Only Stores, spoke with me while container ships sat idle off the Port of Long Beach. He argued supply chain was kept from the strategy table because it was measured on cost and service rather than growth. Lou builds teams that mix finance, operations and HR backgrounds, and wants planning to reach upstream to raw materials and commodity markets. The metrics he would change first: financials and talent.

Measuring Success in DE&I

James Momon

James Momon became 3M's first chief equity officer after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, near 3M's headquarters. He explained how equity differs from equality by recognizing the history behind today's disparities, and described a $50 million social justice fund focused largely on access to STEM careers, including work with St. Paul Public Schools. He backs employee resource groups while insisting on inclusion for everyone, and wants survey, turnover and exit data combined into one coherent story.

Unlearning Old Standardized Habits

Kety Duron

I asked Kety Duron, chief human resources officer at City of Hope, whether the priority is upskilling or unlearning. Her answer was unlearning the one-size-fits-all processes we built for efficiency and scale. She wants to honor the skills that got us here while teaching managers to move from leading by visibility to leading with empathy. City of Hope now recruits beyond its region and beyond healthcare, and she pushes her staff to read the HR dashboard themselves.

Coexisting With Technology

Gustavo Canton

Gustavo Canton, who leads machine learning and AI programs on Starbucks' analytics team, expects most of today's jobs to be gone by 2030 and reminds us that people are feeling machines that think. He asked leaders to stop handing humans the work of algorithms, to get good at telling stories with data, and to invest in self-awareness for everyone, not only top executives. His boldest proposal was a four-day work week with a fifth day devoted entirely to learning.

Just In Time Education

Mike McDonough

Mike McDonough, president of Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey, believes higher education keeps forgetting to ask who its students are. He fought hard to bring students with Down syndrome to campus, estimates about 40 percent of his students are hungry, and says 83 percent of his budget comes from tuition. He called for just-in-time and competency-based education. His most humbling lesson came from a new advisor: a program failed because the last bus left campus before class began.

Part 3: Pivot (Trailer)

Glenn Llopis

Pivot is the third habit: identifying the actions that will transform how we lead rather than nudge it forward a little. The leadership skills that got you to the present won't carry you into the future. The leaders who excel will build environments that release people from the fear holding them back. This segment opens the final part of the 2021 summit, beginning with a frank conversation among university leaders about their own day of reckoning.

Education in a World of Ambiguity

Robert Johnson

Dr. Robert Johnson, president of Western New England University, grew up in Detroit and says most of us were educated, and learned to manage, like a factory line. Leaders now have to lead in ambiguity, accept many routes to the same goal, and help people learn, unlearn and relearn as a matter of course. Listening to two students that morning, he concluded they already understand this, and leaders are the problem. His advice: evolve or become obsolete.

Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow

Wendy York

Wendy York, dean of the business college at Clemson University, believes COVID shifted the balance of power to the people we serve because it showed everyone their safety could not be guaranteed. In business school she was taught that empathy would make her weak; she now calls it a leader's great strength. Clemson is building a leadership certificate that starts in sophomore year. She asks students to name their values, and hers are be authentic, be brave, be inclusive.

Re-imagining the Student of the Future

Malvika Bhagwat

Malvika Bhagwat grew up in India in a school that reshuffled students every three months by test scores. After 10th grade she locked herself away for two weeks until her parents moved her to an IB school, where choice and close relationships with teachers changed her path. Now a partner leading outcomes work at an education venture firm, she argues that teaching to the average reaches almost no one, and that today's learners include working parents and midcareer professionals.

The Power of Personalized Medicine

Ed Kim

Dr. Ed Kim, physician-in-chief at City of Hope Orange County, challenges the language of cancer care: patients don't fail chemotherapy; chemotherapy fails them. Three people with lung cancer can look identical under a microscope and still have entirely different diseases. Having written hundreds of clinical trials, he is working to cut eligibility criteria, which number 37 at the median, so trials reflect real patients. He went into medicine after losing his 12-year-old brother when he was 14.

Humanizing Healthcare

Tom Jackiewicz

Tom Jackiewicz, president and COO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, believes healthcare lost its sense of caring under the strain of the pandemic, gun violence and impersonal buildings. Architects proposed a cool, scientific design for a new cancer center; days later, patients said that was exactly what they didn't want. After hearing Kayla Redig describe her impersonal care there, Tom invited her to help shape it. He also questions exam rooms built around a table nobody likes.

Strengthening Culture With Individuality

Mony Iyer

Mony Iyer, chief operating officer at Banfield Pet Hospital, believes people do their best work when they stop worrying about how they're perceived. He described a support tool his headquarters team built that landed with a thud in the hospitals; they took the feedback, rebuilt it and earned rave reviews. He spent two weeks working in a hospital during onboarding and still runs monthly listening tours. People should be judged on how they work and what they deliver, he said.

Leading a Multi-Generational Workforce

Ninfa Saunders

Ninfa Saunders spent 25 years in healthcare's C-suite after starting as a bedside nurse, most recently as CEO of Navicent Health in Georgia. She compares building culture to pinning Jell-O to a wall: it never sticks unless you keep working at it. With five generations in the workforce, she says legacy leaders like her expect to announce a plan and see it done, but what matters is translation. Her starting point for any culture change is honest self-assessment.

Democratizing Care

Harlan Levine

Dr. Harlan Levine, City of Hope's president of strategy and business ventures and chairman of AccessHope, joined me in a prerecorded conversation about cancer care for employees. AccessHope pairs cancer specialists with a patient's local doctor so people can stay home, and runs a nurse line for questions as basic as whether radiation will make them glow. Among roughly 50 employers, he has seen one company's distribution center supervisors make the first call for colleagues diagnosed with cancer.

Changing The Definition of Health

DeAnna Minus-Vincent

DeAnna Minus-Vincent leads social integration and health equity for RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey. Early in her career she saw women rely on their 12-year-old sons to translate at the OB-GYN, and says we are still solving the same problems 25 years later. Her system now screens every patient for social needs, whatever their income. She once weighed 120 pounds more, and a review found Black employees drew 40 percent of disciplinary actions while making up 20 percent of staff.

Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools

Andy Sulick

Andy Sulick, president of Santa Margarita Catholic High School, saw what the pandemic did to young people's mental health in Orange County and decided his school had to respond. His team began asking students and faculty what would help, treating each objection as a need stated negatively. Students helped design a wellness space placed beside campus ministry and activities so no one feels singled out. For the first time in 34 years, students join leadership meetings.

The Courage to Be Authentic

Arthur Valdez

Arthur Valdez, Target's chief supply chain and logistics officer, defines courage as staying authentic when people want you to change. His family roots run from Cuba to two generations of field workers in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Early in his Walmart career, he was the only one to raise his hand when Lee Scott jokingly asked who would move to Mexico City. Two weeks later he was there. Be willing to be misunderstood until you're understood, he advised.

Stay in Discomfort

Mark Gunn

Mark Gunn, chief human resources officer at 99 Cents Only Stores, believes courage and vulnerability have to coexist. A single father of three, he once left a meeting of top Walmart executives to pick up his suspended son. When he scolded him, his son said his father didn't make him feel safe, and that changed how Mark listens. He urges leaders to hold people in discomfort longer and to welcome them because of their experiences, not in spite of them.

The Individual Revolution

Nik Modi

Nik Modi, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets who covers consumer companies, closed our 2021 summit by describing the individual revolution. Many well-run companies, he said, are frogs in boiling water. He pointed to a tooth sensor from Tufts, a Tokyo restaurant that 3D-prints meals for your gut biome, and Robinhood investors moving stock prices as evidence that power is passing to individuals. His advice was to bring frontline workers, who know customers best, into decision making.