Day: October 21, 2021

Women In Wellness: Tammie Chang on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Boundaries start with you. Boundaries must come from within, from a strong sense of self, inner worth, your core values, and the core of who you are. Without a strong sense of your inherent worth and your values, setting boundaries is very difficult to accomplish. Start by getting clear on who you are, on your values, what you stand for and what your non-negotiable are as a woman and as a human being.

As a part of our series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tammie Chang, MD.

Tammie Chang, M.D., is a board-certified physician in pediatric hematology/oncology, leadership coach, author and co-founder of Pink Coat, MD, an uplifting community to empower women physicians. She is the program director for ELEVATE, the American Medical Women’s Association’s leadership development program for women physician attendings, and the medical director of Provider Wellness for her healthcare system. She can be reached at her self-titled site, www.tammiechangmd.com.

Using her expertise in coaching, leadership and consulting work, background in wellness and work as a physician, Chang guides women physicians to become the best version of themselves and protect their well-being by helping them to achieve greater balance, prevent burnout and live healthier lives. Dr. Chang is the co-author of How to Thrive as a Woman Physician together with her Brown Medical School classmate, Luisa Duran, MD. Dr. Chang’s upcoming book, The Ultimate Guide to Boundaries for Women Physicians: Release Burnout, Stress and Emotional Exhaustion in 8 Minutes a Day, focuses on the understanding that to heal and serve others, one must first focus on having a healthy body, spirit and mind.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

Absolutely! It’s a pleasure and a joy to be here with you and your readers! I’m a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, coach, and medical director of provider wellness in Tacoma, Washington. I’m deeply passionate about helping all physicians to thrive in our personal and professional lives.

Everything about my life now has grown out of the darkest period of my life only two years ago, when I was so burned out and emotionally exhausted as a pediatric hematology/oncology physician, that I felt suicide was my only way out. I have since come to learn that I was not alone in my experience, with one in five physicians contemplating suicide, and physicians having the highest rate of suicide of any profession.

My purpose, my mission and my Why, is to change the culture of medicine to one of true wellness, where physicians and healthcare workers prioritize their own well-being and care for themselves, as they care for others. To a culture where asking for and receiving help are viewed as a sign of strength, not weakness. To a culture where leaders courageously share and model their vulnerability and humanity openly. And to a culture of medicine where women and women of color are represented in leadership with equity.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

I hit the lowest point of my life and career five years after completing my medical training at the age of 38. During a period of collective trauma in my group, including the loss of multiple family members, many to cancer, record numbers of pediatric cancer relapses, deaths and new cancer diagnoses, and during a time when we were already short-staffed and emotionally spent, I hit rock bottom. I took it all on as my own responsibility, and pushed through my own exhaustion, as I had been trained to do in the 15 plus years of medical training it took to become a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. Asking for help was never an option. Asking for help is not encouraged in our medical culture and profession as physicians. Asking for help is considered a sign of failure and weakness.

Finally, one day after a particularly difficult and prolonged end-of-life discussion with a patient’s family, I was done. All I could think about was driving my car off a cliff. And I nearly did that day.

Instead, I chose to ask for help. And this moment has become the catalyst for everything in my life today.

I’ve learned that to be the physicians and leaders we are capable of being, that we must care for ourselves first. If we do not put our own oxygen masks on first, we can’t help anyone else, least of all ourselves. And our families, patients, communities, and world need us to be ok so that we can care for and heal others. As physicians, we enter our profession with deep purpose and passion: to heal the sick and to do no harm. The culture of medicine must change to allow healers to care for ourselves as we are driven to care for others. Do no harm must apply to ourselves, first.

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

My biggest mistake was a lack of personal boundaries. In fact, I had never even heard of the term or concept of boundaries as a new attending physician at the age of 33. I took everything on as my responsibility, just as I had as a medical student, intern, resident and fellow. I didn’t know how to say “no.” I had been trained to believe that everything must be sacrificed in the service of our patients, even if that meant we didn’t eat, sleep, or take care of ourselves in the process. This culture and attitude are ingrained in us from the very beginning of our medical training as first year medical students. It’s no wonder that we are facing the largest physician burnout crisis in history now, as the pandemic continues.

I’ve learned the hard way to set firm boundaries for myself. I have to say “no” even when I feel guilty and feel the urge to say “yes.” I must recognize that I can’t help or save everyone around me, and that in many instances giving others the grace of choosing their own path is perhaps even the more compassionate and loving approach. I’ve learned to give myself grace, as I am far from perfect, and struggle with setting boundaries every single day myself, even now. I have learned a lot in the process and want other women to have this same knowledge and power, too.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I will forever be eternally grateful to my Pink Coat, MD co-founder, Brown Medical School classmate, and life-long friend, Luisa Duran, MD. We had lost touch after we finished our respective fellowship training programs, Luisa in adult endocrinology at the University of Washington and me in pediatric hematology/oncology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. By chance we reconnected while she was in Seattle at a conference just shortly after I had come back from severe burnout and suicidal ideation. In the 30-minute drive between Seattle to SeaTac airport, I shared my struggles, and she shared her own of severe isolation and burnout. We vowed then to create something together so that other women physicians would not have to struggle as we had. We vowed to create a better world and practice of medicine for all present and future women in medicine. This was how Pink Coat, MD was born, in September of 2019.

Through creating our Pink Coat, MD community and platform, we have not only helped other women physicians to transform their lives and careers, but we have also transformed our own. Luisa and I talk often about how Pink Coat, MD has saved us, and how we have saved each other. We not only saved our own medical careers but are now deeply committed to a life-long mission to save the careers of women physicians everywhere.

Ok perfect. Now let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

My Why is the driving force behind everything I do, borne out of that dark period of my life in 2019. Why I have co-founded Pink Coat, MD together with Luisa Duran, a safe, supportive and loving community for women physicians to help us do our best work and live our best lives. Why I wanted to help AMWA to create its first leadership development program for women physicians, ELEVATE. Why Luisa and I have co-authored How to Thrive as a Woman Physician, and why I have also written a second book, The Ultimate Guide to Boundaries for Women Physicians: Release Burnout, Stress and Emotional Exhaustion in 8 Minutes a Day.

Through Pink Coat, MD, we strive to create a safe, loving community and space for women physicians to come together and support each other. We provide easily accessible evidence-based resources taught by experts in each field to help women physicians thrive in all parts of their lives: women’s empowerment and leadership development, mindful self-compassion, parenting support, social and peer support, and professional coaching.

My dream is to inspire us all to create a healthier, kinder, more resilient and more compassionate culture of medicine. One where we prioritize our wellness and well-being so that we can lean on our resilience and each other in difficult times — and create a better world for future generations of physicians, healthcare workers and women in medicine, together.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

Setting healthy boundaries can be the most difficult challenge of all for women, regardless of our profession or role. We were not raised or socialized to have boundaries, nor were boundaries modeled for us. The concept of boundaries was only introduced by clinical psychologists in the 1980s and popularized by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend in the 1990s. So the vast majority of us as women were never even introduced to this concept until well into adulthood.

Below are five boundary tweaks that can help us as women:

1. Boundaries start with you. Boundaries must come from within, from a strong sense of self, inner worth, your core values, and the core of who you are. Without a strong sense of your inherent worth and your values, setting boundaries is very difficult to accomplish. Start by getting clear on who you are, on your values, what you stand for and what your non-negotiables are as a woman and as a human being.
2. We often must create boundaries from ourselves! Notice when you have critical or judgmental thoughts about yourself. What are your thoughts saying to you? Notice when the voice of your inner critic is especially harsh, loud, or overwhelming. Know that you are not your inner thoughts. These are just thoughts. We develop thoughts in response to a neutral situation. Our thoughts then drive our emotions, our behavior and ultimately our results. Start by noticing the voice inside your head that is saying “I’m not good enough,” or “How could you be so stupid?” or “I can’t believe you just did that.” Draw a boundary around those thoughts.
3. When do you find yourself feeling guilty? When do you notice yourself saying “I should…?” This may be a clue that you are saying “yes” when you actually want to be saying “no.”
4. For professional women, allow yourself to completely disconnect when you are not at work. Turn your pager, email and phone notifications off when you are not at work. Don’t open your email or your electronic medical records from home, ever. Set this firm boundary for yourself.
5. For perfectionists and hyper-achievers (myself included), know that not all of your work must to be A+ work. In fact, for women physicians struggling with patient charting overwhelm, I recommend reframing this task so that women only aim to produce B- or even C+ plus work. I help them to recite my favorite phrase, C = MD…! Study after study shows that women endlessly refine their work, and this holds us back from playing big and living more authentic lives.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I think it’s exactly what I’m a part of now — the movement to create a kinder, healthier and more compassionate culture of medicine, so that physicians nationwide are healthy, and thriving. Because if our physicians are not well, are burning out, leaving our profession, and dying by suicide at record rates, who will be left to care for all of us? We need to ensure that the healers are also ok, so that they can continue to care for and heal our communities. There are about 1 million physicians practicing in the United States today for a population of 330 million. We are already expected to have a 139,000 physician shortage by 2033. If we don’t change the way we practice medicine now, we soon will not have enough physicians to care for our population.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

What I would say to a young woman physician starting your career…

1. Not everything is your responsibility. You must say no. In fact, it is often the kinder and more compassionate choice to you and to others, when you say no.
2. Patients do not come first — you do as a physician. If you are not ok, you can’t care for patients, or anyone else for that matter.
3. Thriving is not the absence of burnout. Merely surviving is not thriving. Do what you need now to take care of yourself and your entire life, so that you can actually thrive in all aspects of your life.
4. Your identity may be tied to your profession as a physician. But you are a whole person. Not only who you are as a physician. You are a human being first, before you are a physician.
5. Get clear on your Why and your top core values from the very beginning. Not what you’ve been raised to believe, what you’ve been trained to believe, or what society tells you to believe, but what you believe. When you know your purpose, your values and your Why with clarity, decisions and challenges become much easier. Your life is more in harmony with your deepest and most authentic self, and you are more able to live with ease and in flow.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

I am deeply passionate about changing the culture and stigma around mental health — in our society as a whole and for physicians and providers in healthcare. Nothing could be more backward than a medical profession where the healers are expected to heal everyone else without taking care of themselves or receiving help. We know that 90% of physicians report symptoms of depression and anxiety, yet only a fraction of physicians seeks mental health support. Over 70% of physicians report symptoms of moderate to severe burnout, which manifests as emotional exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and lack of meaning in work.

I know this is not who we want to have caring for our population of 330 million people, or what is best or for our society. We need a culture of medicine that cares for physicians and healthcare workers the way we care for others.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

Follow me on Instagram where I post daily insights, tips and tricks, and inspiration to help you thrive and set boundaries as a woman and a leader! You can also find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Thank you…!

---

Women In Wellness: Tammie Chang on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Female Founders: Melinda Thomas of Octave Bioscience On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Spend time on the documents. A lot of people just want to sign documents really quickly because they’re awkward or they’re complicated and confusing, but the documents can also be there to aid in a difficult conversation and to make sure your expectations are all aligned. Some people think it’s no big deal, I’m just going to sign it, because that bad thing will never happen. Well, guess what? If you don’t address things up front, it is more likely to happen and when it does — that’s when you need the document. So spend a little time and make sure they are done properly.

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Melinda Thomas, COO, CO-Founder, Octave Bioscience.

Melinda has over two decades of experience starting and leading health companies. Using her expertise, she wraps a company around a technical/scientific team so they can focus on meeting the company’s milestones. Melinda built CardioDx, a molecular diagnostics company specializing in cardiovascular genomics, and ParAllele, a high-throughput sequencing and SNP discovery company from the foundation point. ParAllele was acquired by Affymetrix in what one investor said was their best investment of the decade. Previously, she served as the Inaugural Entrepreneur in Residence for New York City, solving problems for aspiring entrepreneurs, and as Chair of the Board for the Save the Redwoods League. Prior to ParAllele, she guided Molecular Dynamics Manufacturing, building it from an 8 person to 85 person manufacturing organization. Melinda holds an MBA from Harvard and a BS from UC Berkeley.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I grew up in Palo Alto, a university town in the heart of the Silicon Valley, so I was surrounded by bright people doing amazing things. My father was an engineer/economist with a PhD from MIT who focused his life on how to be the best person he could be and to share those talents to make the world a more just and peaceful place. My mother was all about finding opportunities and making things happen. Both of these role models were critical to my work as an entrepreneur in the life sciences. After graduating from The University of California at Berkeley, I thought I wanted to get my law degree so I could practice public interest law — I wanted to help save the world. I took the LSAT, applied, and got into a good school, but as the time to leave neared, I knew myself well enough to know that I was having doubts about whether that was my path to follow. So, as my way of testing to see if I actually needed the law degree, I picked up and moved to Washington, DC to do public interest work. While I was in DC, I ran into Bob Noyce of Intel, and I had the opportunity to explain to him what I was trying to do. He told me that instead of law, I should go into manufacturing — that bright minds were needed there. Since I’m a STEM girl, and I like science, math, and processes — all represented in manufacturing — I took his advice and moved back to the Bay Area, where I worked at a manufacturing organization while I was applying to business school.

After I graduated from business school, I went back to the Bay Area again, knowing now for sure that I wanted to work in life sciences. I basically apprenticed at a health care manufacturing company, helping to scale that organization while learning my craft and the industry until I was ready to start my own first company.

I was part of the team that launched and led ParAllele and CardioDx before starting Octave Bioscience, my current company. At Octave, we’re developing a care management platform for neurodegenerative diseases — starting with multiple sclerosis — and our goal is to improve patient management decisions and create better outcomes while also lowering costs for the health care system.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

When I left ParAllele, I thought I would never have that great an experience — of starting a company — again. Then I felt the same way about CardioDx. It was also terrific. So I was really surprised that Octave is 100 times better than even that. I have an amazing business partner in Bill Hagstrom, our CEO. We have an extraordinary Board of Directors and investors. Really most amazing of all is how each person we hire has felt immediately like a part of the team. We say an Octavian, as we call ourselves, runs at the problem, truly believes that we will figure it out, and is very food motivated. We just have to point people in the right direction and watch the wonderful things that get created.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

This was a hard one for me to answer because I have a hard time calling things ‘mistakes’ — things may have not gone the way I planned when I started, but it’s all a learning experience. I often see how things turn out as it just went a different way. So now you are going down a new path and you learn from that and keep moving forward. This is something you encounter a lot when you found a company or work in the startup world. You have no choice but to move forward.

The funny part is that I once asked my family and friends what funny stories or mistakes they thought I had made in my career, and they had plenty of opinions to share with me about that!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

In my first job out of business school I had a tremendous mentor in Bruce Leisz. Two things he did that were very important. 1) He really knew operations and how to do it well. He was focused on setting up best in class processes so we could always deliver. 2) He let his team try out their ideas for how to do things with one exception. He wouldn’t put us in a situation where we could make a “fatal mistake.” That framework of being surrounded by the best practices with the opportunity to learn by doing was also critical in my training to be an entrepreneur. I was able to bring all that to my first company.

Now to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

My work as the inaugural Entrepreneur In Residence for New York City was about being a mentor and role model to aspiring entrepreneurs in the life sciences in that city, suggesting that a lack of both of those holds anyone back. A big part of the early days of a company is getting funding. Studies show that funding of female founders is not on par with that of male founders. The number of funds being founded recently focused on addressing this disparity is another sign that it is a real problem. Funding is all about assessing risk and reward. People naturally tend toward thinking something is less risky if it is more familiar to them and/or they can pattern match with something that has been successful before. This gives the edge to companies that look, historically, like other companies have.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

To build on my last point, anything that gives the opportunity to someone who maybe isn’t what we are used to seeing being a founder of a company, would create more success stories. We need to focus on the skills and abilities that really make companies successful like strategic thinking, perseverance, adaptability. We need to do the hard work of digging down to understand those factors when assessing an investment rather than just relying on what we have seen before. We as a society are actually pretty adaptable if you think about what has fundamentally changed in the last 10, 20 30 years. We get accustomed to new things over time until they seem “normal”. The reason there are more investment funds being started by women who focus on women led companies is that they, through their own success, know there is untapped potential in the market and they are going after it. Lastly, it’s great that publications like yours are communicating the success stories.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

At my current company, Octave Bioscience, one of our areas of work is to map the clinical journey a person living with Multiple Sclerosis goes through; what are the decision points, what are the outcomes. We understand that each journey is different and the data on many peoples’ paths can teach us how to develop better solutions for better outcomes. This idea of learning from different journeys to get to better outcomes suggests that we need to embrace this moment in history where we are hopefully moving beyond group classifiers like gender and race, and moving toward understanding the power of personalization in areas like medicine and startups.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder. Can you explain what you mean?

The biggest myth I have heard: “If you’re a founder, you have control.” Throw that out the window. Even in everyday life you rarely have control. It is about working with others to get to a common goal. It would be ridiculous to think I could walk in to a meeting, tell everyone what to do, expect them to do it, and expect good outcomes. You need to walk in to that meeting understanding the goal you are trying to achieve and trust you have a team that can work together to figure out how to achieve it. Your view is just one view on how that could happen. Together you usually get an even better result than any one idea alone. As a founder you have more responsibility, not more control.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

The number one trait that is necessary for a founder is initiative. It is looking around you, seeing problems or things that need to change, and taking the initiative to do something about it. Not everyone wants to be challenged like that every day. And it is every single day in a startup. Nothing was there before and now you have to build it all.

Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Don’t rush the important decisions. Startups by nature are working at increased speed because you need to accomplish a lot with the money someone else has given you before you go to ask for more money at a higher valuation. This “need for speed” sometimes causes people to think that everything is urgent. Not everything is urgent. Some things are just really important. For example, we fall into the trap of needing a new person “yesterday” because we’re on a deadline, or there’s funding coming up, or a conference. But on the important decisions, you need to take the time to do them well. This includes the people you bring in and maybe most importantly the people you start with. I sometimes get asked why I chose to work with another serial entrepreneur, Bill Hagstrom, and my response is that I knew I could ride the roller coaster with him. The startup world is a real roller coaster ride and whatever your business plan was five years ago, you’re going to laugh looking back at it. Things will change and it’s important not to have rushed the big decisions and to have made sure the right people are on the ride with you.
2. Think about the long game. For example, a startup rarely does one round of funding. So what should each round look like strategically, in terms of type of investor, and amount raised compared to other similar companies. If you don’t play the long game you can make some mistakes early on in terms of your cap table that will hamper your fund raising efforts later. Bill is brilliant at this.
3. Spend time on the documents. A lot of people just want to sign documents really quickly because they’re awkward or they’re complicated and confusing, but the documents can also be there to aid in a difficult conversation and to make sure your expectations are all aligned. Some people think it’s no big deal, I’m just going to sign it, because that bad thing will never happen. Well, guess what? If you don’t address things up front, it is more likely to happen and when it does — that’s when you need the document. So spend a little time and make sure they are done properly.
4. You don’t have control — you have responsibility. I’ve said that one before and I will say it again!
5. This is really fun. It’s the best! I love building things from scratch; I love doing things that require all my talents. Everything I have ever done in my life has brought me to this moment where it’s taking everything I’ve ever learned to take on this big challenge — and it’s a really big challenge. We are trying to change a care and measurement paradigm for a neurodegenerative disease! It is so enjoyable every day, well almost every day, and I never get tired of it.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Any success I have had in life needs to acknowledge that I was, to use a baseball analogy, born “rounding third”. Not that I haven’t worked really hard at running for Home Plate, but I definitely have been given many gifts in my life that gave me a head start. To me that head start obligates me to do the best I can with it; that sense of responsibility to the greater good. It is part of what drew me to the life sciences and health field. What you are working on is fundamentally about improving the human condition. Outside of my companies I have also been involved with philanthropic organizations, most notably the Save the Redwoods League as Chair of the Board of Directors. I always like to say that when I enter a redwood forest, I really feel like they are saving me, not the other way around. They are terrific at cleaning the air and water as well as bringing a sense of hope and peace to anyone who is lucky enough to spend time in them. They are also extraordinary biologically sound which is why they can grow so tall and live so long. There is a lot we can learn from them. So I brought my business skills to an extremely well run organization and hopefully helped take it up a notch as well as continue to help it with its mission.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I think great influence is an overstatement although I do have my unique story to tell. Financial literacy is a cause I am really interested in right now. At the end of the day, when people speak of inequality, it is usually around economic inequality. It is about having the resources to do what you want to do in life, and in my case, in a startup as well. How do we educate people to know not only how to access and build resources, but also manage them well? You don’t get this in school, not even business school, if what we are talking about is personal finances. In the early stages of a company, it is about how you manage your cash. You don’t want to run out. In my first company I created some simple charts and spreadsheets around what the drivers of the cash burn were. They showed we understood where we were using the cash, and therefore how we were prioritizing decisions within the company, and most importantly, when we would run out. One of my VCs asked if they could share it with their other portfolio companies. I was surprised because I thought, “Doesn’t everybody do this?” I have used them in every company since the first.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

My husband and I have actually had this conversation before. We talk about what the best dinner party would be, and our invite list includes President Obama, Stephen Colbert, Steph Curry, and Adele. The reason is because these people are just so smart — they’re value-driven with integrity and authenticity, and they’re funny. So we think we would have a really fun dinner — we wouldn’t be trying to optimize how much information we could get in that moment, but instead we would be building a relationship that would allow us, over time, to do great things together.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this

---

Female Founders: Melinda Thomas of Octave Bioscience On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Cheryl R Blanchard of Anika Therapeutics On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Stay curious and listen — Don’t stop learning and being involved in the fundamentals of the business or whatever it is you do. Having an interest in a STEM field will make this natural. Ask hard questions. Science and technology can do great things, but having important and sometimes difficult debate should be part of a healthy culture to ensure problems are solved and progress is made.

As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cheryl R. Blanchard, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, Anika Therapeutics, Inc.

Cheryl R. Blanchard, Ph.D. is the President and Chief Executive Officer at Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANIK), a global joint preservation company focused on early intervention orthopedics. Prior to her work as CEO of Anika, she served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Microchips Biotech, Inc., a venture-backed biotechnology company developing regenerative medicine and drug delivery products from 2014 until its sale to Daré Bioscience, Inc. in 2019. From 2000 to 2012, she served in multiple officer positions of Zimmer, Inc. (now Zimmer Biomet), a medical device company focused on musculoskeletal products, including as the Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, and General Manager of Zimmer Biologics. Dr. Blanchard was also a member of Zimmer’s executive committee and founded, built, and led Zimmer’s Joint Preservation/Regenerative Medicine business. She is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

At first, I was going down the path of becoming a musician, but one day my music teacher of 15 years said to me, “I don’t have a lot of students that could go do anything — you should really think about that and if music is really the life you want.” That was a clarifying moment for me that triggered my decision to shift toward my love of math and science and attend engineering school.

After working as an engineer for some years, I realized that as much as I loved science and technology, the engineering career path alone was not going to satisfy me and allow me to make a broad impact on strategy and company culture or provide me an opportunity to build a business. To do so, I would need to be in a leadership position. This is what drove me to develop and move into management and business leadership roles, which are historically less traditional for engineers. I focused on learning as much as I could and surrounding myself with mentors and a network that could help me steer and develop my career path in that direction. That said, my STEM interests and training have always been and continue to be a significant factor in my ability to successfully lead companies whose growth engine is technology driven. I draw on that knowledge and natural curiosity each day to help guide Anika.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at Anika?

I came into this position as CEO of Anika following the unexpected death of the incumbent CEO and two significant acquisitions. The organization had experienced a lot of disruption with all of that and had a need for some real work on the culture. Shortly after I started, COVID hit. For my first 6 months on the job, my main focus necessarily involved managing through COVID and addressing all of the normal turmoil and work of integrating the acquisitions, but I also didn’t wait on doing real work to morph the company culture and engage employees. I spent a lot of time working with my team developing and communicating our mission and values and motivating our employees towards our new, shared vision of a “One Anika.”

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was in college, I studied abroad in Switzerland at a French speaking engineering school, The EPFL in Lausanne. This university had yet to accept women into the program and enrolled me as an exchange student not knowing I was female. I lived in a boarding house with 15 male students, and the woman who was running the house. It was quite awkward when I arrived at the house and the school.

I was also still learning how to speak French, and I made two major language gaffes at the dinner table on my very first night. First, I tried to refuse more food by saying I was full. I used a direct translation in my mind, but not knowing any familiar phrases, I instead proclaimed, “I am pregnant.” Then, there was a fireplace behind the table, and it was very warm. As I was taking my sweater off to cool down, I thought I said, “It’s hot in here,” but what I really said was “I’m hot.” So, during my first meal with 15 new male housemates I confidently told them I was pregnant and hot, making for an unusually awkward situation. At the end of the day, they all became like brothers to me, and those stories have lived on always bringing a laugh to a conversation. But what I learned that night was to ensure you know what you’re saying before you confidently say it.

This is a lesson I’ve continued to apply in my work life. I think people who have a lot of technical education are trained to know all the answers and be very confident in those answers. But I have learned throughout my career that often it is better to stop talking and listen, because you probably have more to learn than you have to contribute.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

At Anika, we’re focused on joint preservation which to us means creating and delivering meaningful advancements in early intervention orthopedic care that will restore active living for people globally. Research shows that the population, while ageing, is becoming increasingly active and health conscious and those suffering from arthritis and joint pain are in turn searching for treatments to allow them to remain active and pain free as they have orthopedic issues arise. In addition, patients prefer to feel better with as little intervention as possible. Patients want to stay active and keep doing the things they love like running, hiking, weightlifting and gardening to name a few. It’s their demand that’s driving orthopedic surgeons to use our joint preservation solutions to keep them moving while avoiding an invasive total hip, total knee replacement or other type of traditional total joint replacement.

We’re in a great space with a demographic that’s really clamoring for the products we’re focused on developing and one of the things that makes Anika stand out is its people. We have a team that is very passionate about joint preservation and is excited to be at a high-growth company with a great culture deploying innovative technologies to keep people active without pain. There is a huge opportunity to serve patients by improving their quality of life while also growing the organization and serving our shareholders well.

For a company of our size and revenue level, we also have a very strong balance sheet and provide an excellent opportunity to invest in a growth company, which makes us a bit of an unusual public company med tech story. People really gravitate toward a great team and invest themselves in building something that’s going to serve patients well and be aligned with building shareholder value.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We have a robust product pipeline that spans osteoarthritis (OA) pain management, regenerative solutions, sports medicine soft tissue repair and bone preserving joint technologies which comprise a comprehensive portfolio and continuum of care in early intervention orthopedic solutions that are used to treat orthopedic issues in all joints.

We currently have a product in a U.S. clinical trial called Cingal®, that we believe has the opportunity to be the best OA pain management product on the market. Cingal is currently sold outside of the U.S. by our international team and benefits patients in over 30 countries with a non-opioid method of treating their OA pain.

We also have an exciting cartilage repair product, Hyalofast®, that is sold in over 30 countries outside the US and is also in a clinical trial to obtain U.S. approval. Currently in the U.S., the market leader in cartilage repair requires two surgeries and is extremely expensive. Our product, Hyalofast, is a minimally invasive, off-the-shelf cartilage repair product that is already clinically proven and we’ll be thrilled to add it to our existing joint preservation portfolio in the U.S. once we receive FDA approval.

Additionally, we have a regenerative solution for repairing a rotator cuff in the pipeline and we recently launched an injectable bone substitute to strengthen weak bone and encourage bone growth to treat insufficiency fractures called Tactoset® that is gaining real traction. Additionally, Tactoset just received expanded clearance for hardware augmentation which expands the capability of Tactoset for augmenting suture anchor fixation in sports medicine surgeries. Furthermore, we have a number of other product development activities in the sports medicine soft tissue repair area as well as in the bone preserving joint technologies space, including a new total wrist product that was launched in June 2021 called the WristMotion® Total Wrist Arthroplasty (TWA) System.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

I am absolutely not satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM and I don’t know of anyone who is. There are a couple of forces at play with this issue. First, I don’t think that girls and young women are told frequently enough or at a young enough age that STEM options are open to them. In addition, I don’t think that they are encouraged enough to pursue STEM careers, which are often the most lucrative jobs. Don’t get me wrong, exposure, encouragement and opportunities are much better today than when I was a young woman, but we need more exposure, and more mentors and thought leaders as visible role models. As it is said, you can’t be what you can’t see. In fact, The Geena Davis Institute first identified “The Scully Effect” — from the eponymous character on the X-Files who, based on their data, inspired over 60% of those surveyed to pursue STEM careers — showing that representation and role models matter!

The other major factor is on the negative side of the equation. Young women are inundated with negative messaging around what they should look like, act like, wear, etc.., especially today with so many social media platforms, “influencers,” and filters used to skew appearances and promote unhealthy and, frankly, unrealistic and unattainable female body images and other supposed “norms”. I fear that this takes up so much of our promising young women’s mindshare that it becomes difficult for them to pay attention to the meaty, substantive opportunities that would give them an amazing and exciting life, especially during such a formative and vulnerable period of their personal development. I, of course, am speaking in broad strokes here and that is not to negate the significant progress that I have seen during my 35-year career, but we have a long way to go before, for example, 50% of management teams are women, 50% of the CEOs are women, and 50% of directors on boards are women. I would make the same statement about all other measures of diversity including race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, among other attributes, not just gender. Companies, universities, and the government simply need true diversity in leadership positions across the board. It matters to outcomes for all stakeholders.

I have spent much of my volunteer time outside of work trying to create and present STEM opportunities to women and underrepresented minorities. But I’ve come to understand that those efforts are up against pervasive negative messages and it’s a tough thing to battle. I can’t tell you how many times I have had a young woman walk up to me after speaking at her school and say, “I didn’t know a scientist or an engineer or a CEO could look like you.”

I’m a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) which was a huge and unexpected honor for me. When I was inducted just a few years ago, about 2.5% of NAE members were women. I’ve learned that the problem surrounding women in STEM is typically not access and opportunities, it’s actually that girls won’t even consider a STEM career because they don’t think that an engineer, scientist, PhD or a CEO can be someone that looks, acts or dresses a certain way and they think that they have to focus more on how they look than who they are and the massive value they can bring to the world. This needs to change and it likely won’t be fast because these images are so firmly embedded in our toxic media and social media driven culture. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal article deemed Instagram toxic for teenage girls citing data from Instagram’s own research. The Geena Davis Institute is also working to improve the quality and visibility of how women are represented in entertainment and the media. Thank you for your leadership Ms. Davis, this is what it will take to address the issue and much more!

There are also significant issues that women who enter STEM fields face once they are there, but I wanted to focus my thoughts on the pipeline. Those other dynamics are real and continue to exist and it is upon all of us who are in leadership and decision-making positions to ensure progress continues to be made. For example, I applaud the #MeToo movement and the many women and men using their platforms to address systemic issues with sexual abuse and harassment. It was greatly needed. #MeToo

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in STEM or Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?

I am going to focus my comments on what we, as women, can do to put ourselves in better positions to thrive. Make no mistake, there continue to be systemic issues and individual bad actors that make it more difficult for women to reach their goals.

In general, and the research shows this, men tend to be better than women at promoting themselves and sometimes I think at certain points in my career I was almost punished for putting my head down, working hard and delivering results because I wasn’t thinking about how to represent myself. I also think women must get better at building non-traditional relationships within and outside the organization. We must be better networkers and step up and do things that are outside our comfort zone.

Additionally, I think (and research shows) women tend to think they’re not ready for the next step before they have “all” the right skills and experience to do the next job, whereas men can generally tend to feel more comfortable stepping up with less experience or skills. I mentor a lot of young women and I’ll hear them say things like, “I don’t think I’m ready for that, I think I need to do this, this and this first.” But their male counterparts already said they’re ready to do it, even if they haven’t trained or done it before. This can result in real lost opportunities that get compounded over the course of a career.

Some years ago, I remember reading a paper describing a study performed with both female and male surgeons. They were asked questions like: Do you think you’re good at what you do; do you think you need more training? Then they analyzed competency by looking at their outcomes and surgical results to provide a quantitative measure of how good the surgeon actually was. The data were striking. The women thought they had much more to learn and experience to be a good surgeon, but their outcomes were significantly better than their male counterparts, who didn’t think they needed anymore training. These same data have been studied in other fields including science and business. Much has been written on this topic in recent years describing this “imposter” syndrome and the confidence gap between men and women and how it limits the ultimate success of well trained and high performing women. The studies have revealed that confidence is just as important as competence, if not more so, in measures of success. These elements that women face more often than men are likely both genetic and social and will take a very different approach to how we raise our children to change this dynamic. Even just making men and women aware of the data so there is sensitivity around it can make us all better self-advocates and leaders.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?

One of the myths is that you can’t be “feminine”, if that is what you want, and compete on an even playing field. Another myth is you can’t have a family or fully live the personal life you want. I mentioned earlier that often when I speak at schools about STEM, a lot of young women will say, “I didn’t know you could be a scientist or engineer or a CEO and look like that.” Young women often make decisions about what careers to pursue and what not to pursue based on how they think the outside world will perceive and accept them. Social media only augments this thinking by proliferating unrealistic physical ideals and linking them to some idea of happiness and success. But I am here to say, it turns out you can be feminine, stylish, have a wonderful life partner, have children, live an interesting life, do meaningful work, make a great living, contribute to the world, and excel in a STEM industry — if that is what you want!

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in STEM or Tech” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Stay curious and listen — Don’t stop learning and being involved in the fundamentals of the business or whatever it is you do. Having an interest in a STEM field will make this natural. Ask hard questions. Science and technology can do great things, but having important and sometimes difficult debate should be part of a healthy culture to ensure problems are solved and progress is made.
2. Be a servant leader — Get in the trenches, know your employees and customers, what they do, how they do it, and what they need to succeed, then lead by example with empathy and integrity. For me, leading a technology-based company, being able to talk tech with employees is a great asset. I have been told that people appreciate that I understand what they do and the problems they are trying to solve.
3. Focus on people and culture — Hire the right people, develop them, and focus your team’s actions on building a healthy culture so people will feel engaged, thrive, and perform.
4. Be genuine, transparent, and ethical — Build trust and be approachable so people will communicate with you so you can stay curious and listen. Include other’s perspectives to ensure your decision making is inclusive and not harmful to any stakeholder.
5. Communicate — Be informative, decisive, and give feedback to drive accountability and alignment, and express thanks and gratitude. People choose a STEM field knowing it takes dedication and work to pursue, but they are very purpose driven and want to know their contributions are recognized and appreciated.

What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?

Be genuine, approachable, real, and true to yourself. Use your heart as much as your head and trust your instincts and what you know about how to lead. Know when it’s time to listen, when it’s time to be decisive, and when it’s time to talk. I think that women do those things with a different mix of those elements than men tend to, and when we’re true to ourselves and listen to our gut about how to go about those things, we find out we can be pretty darn effective at leading teams to thrive.

What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?

1. Hire the right people and empower them: This is the leadership team that will implement the strategy and set cultural tone with the company.
2. Build deep relationships: Deep relationships across the team will enhance the efficacy of communications, build trust, enable transparency, and result in a high performing organization.
3. Seek out, listen and be responsive to feedback: The larger organization will model this critical tone at the top leadership success factor. Team members will know you are genuine and sincere, reciprocate, and model that behavior with their teams.
4. Communicate, communicate, communicate: Communicate with all levels of the organization. Communicate vision, mission and values, cascade clear goals and objectives by which to measure performance and communicate key information about the business to ensure alignment. Use these elements in your language repetitively and link back to successes and learnings.
5. Be clear and decisive on direction and delegate effectively: You can’t do it all yourself, but make clear decisions so people don’t waste time with ambiguity. Delegate, then go to #1 and repeat.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I would count a few people as mentors that really helped me along the way. One professor in school stands out. I was really struggling with his class and he looked at me and said, “You’re better than you think you are, and you just have to keep going,” which got me through some of the rocky spots in college. In my first job, I had a great mentor who helped me overcome a bad manager for the first few years of my career. Eventually he became my boss, and he was the first person to promote me into management. Just having somebody believe in you is incredibly powerful and being entrusted with a significant responsibility and succeeding at it is extremely motivating.

Years later I worked for a CEO who early in my tenure with him said, “You’re going to be a CEO someday.” I thought that was the most ridiculous thing that I had ever heard because that wasn’t a career path that had even crossed my mind, but he taught me a lot, and I learned on the job what it took to lead an organization and build a business. I feel lucky to have had great mentors. They entrusted me with responsibility, but they also gave me feedback. And if you’re willing to listen to that feedback (even if it’s not easy to truly hear) and respond positively, it can make all the difference in how you move ahead.

I’ve also had great board chairs who mentored and helped me understand what it really meant to be a CEO, what it means to have and manage a board, to have and manage investors, and to stay focused on driving the value proposition. My first board chair said, “Nothing happens at this company unless you make it happen and bad things will happen at this company if you let them happen.” I think about that almost every day because it’s true. The leadership and tone at the top determine company culture and whether it promotes a healthy atmosphere and motivates employees to get their jobs done. With the right strategy, employees getting their jobs done is what drives value. More so, if they are happy, challenged and trusted in those jobs, they will step up in ways that are meaningful and game changing to the company’s success.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I have always worked at companies that are in the medical field and to me, that is a big motivator. Anika’s products do great things to relieve pain and help people stay active. It feels good to bring that kind of goodness to the world while adding value to the economic ecosystem in which we all must live.

In my first job after college, I had top secret clearance doing government work that wasn’t necessarily helping people every day. After doing that for a couple of years, I thought to myself, this is not why I became an engineer and after that revelation, I shifted gears and got into the biomedical space. To me, one of the most exciting things is when your work on a therapy or product finally reaches a patient and you can see the direct benefit that your hard work provided to people. I love the fact that I can combine bringing goodness to the world with what I do for a living. I am grateful as I know not everyone gets to do that. I would like more women to realize that there are many, many STEM careers available to them that feed our innate desire to make the world a better place for the generations to follow and to do work that gives them pride.

Outside of work I strongly believe that it’s upon all of us to support STEM education and philanthropic activities that improve the community in which our employees live and work. You have to pay it forward.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I would start the #youarebetterthanyouthinkyouare movement. I have seen in myself and so many smart, talented, hard-working and capable people, the struggle to move ahead because of self-doubt planted by today’s toxic media and social media environment and sometimes from negative people in their lives. The “you’re better than you think you are movement” would encourage people to remember what they have always known deep down inside — that they have so much to offer and are so valuable, even when they are doubting themselves. Media and social media have done so much damage to so many, not just women, by showing unrealistic images of what people should look like, what they should achieve, and who they should be, that people allow it to negatively influence their lives. Add that to the fact that we have all had people in our lives who were a negative influence and sometimes we all need to be reminded that we are better than we think we are to give us that confidence boost to just keep going, and eventually go do great things. #youarebetterthanyouthinkyouare!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Rise above it” — a.k.a. don’t let the turkeys get you down. I have met with significant obstacles and difficult events in my career that often made me question if I should keep working so hard to achieve my goals. At each crossroad I realized I had to trust my instincts, stay true to myself and not let those outside factors trying to bring me down (usually insecure people with personal agendas) get in the way of doing the meaningful work that I love. Rising above it and pushing forward requires massive grit and mental fortitude and feels ungratifying in the moment but will yield great and sustained results.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Melinda French Gates, because of her significant, persistent, and meaningful philanthropy in the chronically underfunded areas of women’s health, women’s and girl’s rights, and supporting female founders. Prior to Anika, I was CEO of a women’s health company that would not have been able to advance its key asset — a game changing long-acting reversible contraceptive — without her support and funding from the Gates Foundation. She is doing bold things that are not easy but make a difference in the lives of so many women and girls around the world and she puts the needed financial power behind making them actually happen.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this

---

Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Cheryl R Blanchard of Anika Therapeutics On The 5 Leadership was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Female Founders: Audrey Ajakaye of LoveMySkin On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Empathy: Empathy is vital in fostering trust and loyalty within a company. If you can talk regularly with your employees and partners to understand their fears and desires, you’ll be able to put yourself in their shoes and empathize. It is also crucial to support your employees on what they need to do their jobs well. And when you stand up for them in times of crisis, you’ll increase their desire to perform. Empathy is a crucial part of the skin positivity resources on my app. Understanding others’ emotions/feelings around their skin and mental well-being goes a long way in how you support them through their journey to feeling better and loving their skin every day.

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Audrey Ajakaye.

Audrey Ajakaye is a highly motivated high school student who is also the CEO of her own company, LoveMySkin. She has an insatiable goal to contribute to healthcare on a global scale by finding cures for skin related diseases, educating/advocating on issues relating to skin insecurities and biases in diverse populations including those with skin of color.

Her deep passion and resolve to understand the connection between the mind and the skin prompted her to start her own company, LoveMySkin, in her junior year at only 16-years old.

She is a full International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma candidate and a volleyball athlete addition who maintained middle and high school academic standing on the high school honor roll through 12th grade, earning five total awards at the end of her junior year, including an Outstanding Delegate Model UN award, a Book Award from the University of Rochester in recognition of outstanding commitment to social justice and dedication to continuing their unfinished life’s work, two academic awards (IB Spanish and IB English Language and Literature High Level), and The Village School’s Community Outreach award for the high school student whose actions and behavior within the high school community towards their peers epitomize the spirit of caring, respect, and giving. The recipient of this Village award actively takes part in the school community and, going beyond participation, strengthens and betters the community as a whole.

Her hobbies include podcasting, graphic arts, reading and photography.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I am a 17-year old senior at The Village School who created an innovative app to help others navigate racial and societal pressures. I have taken my innovation across the globe to Africa and plan to spread the LoveMySkin message globally.

I know first-hand how it feels to be subjected to skin-related prejudice and colorism, as I was often singled out for my darker skin color, different hair, and my African origin name as a young child. To support me during this distressing period, my mother often would write positive affirmation notes and leave them in my uniform pocket in the morning. These little notes of positivity gave me so much comfort, and I started to find confidence as I navigated the racial and societal pressures around me.

At 16, I began working on the user experience workflow for the LoveMySkin™ app. The beta version of the app got its debut when The Village School nominated me to present my innovation project in January of 2021 with an audience of students, educators, and parents across 70+ Nord Anglia (The Village School parent company) schools located in the Americas, Europe, China, Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East in honor of The Village School’s Innovation Day. In July of 2021, the LoveMySkin™ app was launched on the Apple app store and Google Play Store.

Drawing on my personal experiences, passion for global health, strong STEM background from the Village School, along with months of research and exploration into neuroscience and dermatology scientific journals, I created the app solution that seamlessly connects the mind and skin. The LoveMySkin™ app is a global platform that promotes skin positivity and overall skin wellbeing. Backed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered by Autoderm® API, the LoveMySkin™, the app screens for 44 different types of skin diseases instantaneously and provides details on each skin condition. Additionally, this app has other complementary features (such as chat groups, telederm, and e-commerce) to enhance the user experience further. I developed the LoveMySkin™ app to give voice to everyone suffering from skin conditions and insecurities. This inspired me to incorporate positive skin affirmations, mind-skin wellbeing journaling, skin education content (videos, articles, podcasts, stories, and a skin condition daily tracker for the first app release.

The journey to deliver the app was not trivial, especially given my busy schedule. Still, it was one of the most fulfilling innovation challenges that I have taken on of late. As a full IB Diploma student and a volleyball athlete, my schedule leaves little room for an innovative project. However, I worked hard to make LoveMySkin a reality fueled by my life experiences, deep passion for illuminating mind-skin connectivity, and complete conviction that users desperately need an app like LoveMySkinTM to maintain overall skin health and mental well being. So, I worked intently and stayed disciplined to manage my schedule to accommodate the extra work hours needed to bring my vision to life. I can recall many nights of catching only a few hours of sleep on the family room couch before it was time for school and some missed social gathering opportunities, but it was all well worth it! I wouldn’t change a thing.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

During early August in 2021, LoveMySkin™ embarked on a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) global health campaign in Lagos, Nigeria. During this event, I brought skin education to 250 adolescents (9–17 yr old) living in swamp communities of Lagos with houses primarily supported on stilts. Due to the scarcity of dermatologists in Africa, these children do not have ready access to skincare as we do in the United States. I also got a unique opportunity to share Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology with these underserved children through my LoveMySkin™ app. What made this trip very special was to see how excited the children were to take pictures of their skin concerns and receive results pointing to common skin conditions such as eczema, acne, and ringworm in under 60 seconds, with the pictures disappearing with one click of a button! My biggest takeaway from this experience was that happiness is a choice, no matter what your economic situation in life is. Bringing this awareness early to these communities allows adolescents to free themselves of any stigma and discrimination that they may face due to their skin color and condition. I learned a lot from the experience, which I felt has been a life-changing experience for me that I will forever cherish.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

That’s a tough one. I can’t really think of a funny story, but I guess the closest I can come to a funny story is convincing myself that I could do it all by myself. I laugh about that now. When I started my journey with the LoveMySkin app, I tried to take on everything myself, from designing all the app’s functionalities and user journey to building the list of affirmations and practically everything that could leverage my current and newly acquired skills. However, I quickly realized that was not a sustainable path and learned that CEOs know how to delegate effectively to do work efficiently. They focus on working on activities that best leverage their strengths, trusting others to help support as needed while keeping a laser focus on the vision for the company. Since then, I have managed to run my business with all the extracurricular activities I partake in, such as being a member of multiple honors societies, captain of the varsity volleyball team, ambassador of multiple organizations, and producing my podcast series. It’s all about work-life balance.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

First, I want to thank my mom, who has worked closely with me throughout my journey through thick and thin. I would also like to thank my dad, sister, and brother who have also supported me. My family as a whole has supported me in sharing my visions and passions with the world. That is a privilege that I do not take lightly.

It takes a village to succeed, so I would like to thank my friends for their tremendous support and understanding when I do not make certain hangouts. I appreciate the technology partnership that I have with FirstDerm, collaborating on the artificial intelligence that powers the app’s screening part. Mentoring support from Dante Plush of Giving Tuesday, Elena Olivieri, former Wellbeing and Service Learning Coordinator at the Village School, The Village School community (faculty and students), and the Nord Anglia International School network (Village School is a member school).

In your opinion and experience, what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

Women have made a lot of strides in entrepreneurship and the business sector globally. I feel privileged to stand on the shoulders of many great women who have paved the path for teenagers like myself. However, while we have made significant progress, I believe there is still much we can do, more ground to cover, and more women founders needed in tech and other industries. I believe that funding, accessibility to resources, and lack of adequate support are key barriers that inhibit women from finding their own companies.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

Creating more funding opportunities for women who have innovative and creative ideas can execute their vision. In addition, education programs can help women develop the skills, resources, and connections that women need to excel in business. These support structures/mechanisms would allow the future generation of women to have all the necessary tools to be more successful moving forward.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

There are three main reasons why more women should become founders. First is a women’s approach to problem-solving. When confronted with a complex problem, women tend to bring a different perspective regarding specific problems, tasks, or activities, thereby promoting diversity and inclusiveness, which is critical for better decision-making and, ultimately, any organization’s success. Secondly, women have advanced multi-tasking skills, which would allow them to handle multiple tasks that a start-up company needs to function. Lastly, women have excellent communication and networking skills which they can also use to encourage collaborations and teamwork in an organization.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

One central myth that I have found is that some people think founders hold the answers to critical problems an organization faces because they have the vision. The reality is much more complicated, and if I might add, collaborative. While there is no doubt that successful founders know how to think independently and sometimes defy the status quo, they leverage a lot of the brilliant minds on their team to bring the vision to life.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

I think six major traits make a successful entrepreneur. First is having a solid work ethic. If there’s unfinished business, they are first at the office and the last to leave; they’ll show up on weekends and holidays and work until the job is complete. The second trait is deep passion. Work ethic and passion go hand in hand. It takes work ethic to keep the business running smoothly, and it takes passion for feeling motivated enough to maintain an excellent worth ethic. Good entrepreneurs also have lots of creativity. Companies that thrive are born out of the wild creativity of their creators. Creativity can mean anything from thinking of a unique, differentiating business idea to finding a relationship between two seemingly unrelated ideas to solve a problem. Entrepreneurs must also be motivated, self-starters. A self-starter may not settle for a 9-to-5 job and doesn’t give up at the first sign of struggle. Instead, they take the initiative on their projects and lead themselves. An easygoing attitude is also a vital trait to have. Being easygoing is all about going with the flow, taking new opportunities as they come, not getting stuck in a certain mindset, and being receptive to changes and even criticism. Lastly, one must be eager to learn. No one knows everything. A new business doesn’t often have staff in every department due to a lack of funding or timing to find the right resources for the team. That means entrepreneurs need to learn everything from accounting to marketing from the get-go. In contrast, non-entrepreneurs are prone to take fewer risks and often desire a more structured and predictable income and lifestyle.

Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Undeniable grit: Having grit is a trait that is very crucial for a female founder to succeed and thrive. If you have grit, you’re brave and strong enough to do what it takes to succeed in business and life. With grit, one has the passion and perseverance for long-term goals, despite experiences with failure and adversity. While starting LoveMySkin, there were many sleepless nights. Due to grit, I was able to preserve through those moments because I believed in my vision and saw the long-term benefits for many people worldwide.
2. The courage to ask for help: No person can do all things independently, especially entrepreneurs. Asking for help allows us to surround ourselves with like minds that we can grow together. These people create optimism and hope that we can deal with challenging situations, which improves our resilience. While creating the app, some parts played entirely to my strengths, and others did not. To manage this, I routinely consulted with my team to get help in certain areas.
3. Confidence: One must believe in themselves and what one brings to the table. Greater self-confidence liberates one from self-doubt and negative thought. In addition, greater self-assurance leads to a greater willingness to take calculated risks and an improved ability to step outside of one’s comfort zone. As a young entrepreneur, I had to exhibit confidence to be taken seriously in the tech industry. In addition, I had to learn how to build relationships with much older people outside of my usual social sphere.
4. Focus: In a world of constant distractions and never-ending demands, great leaders understand that success requires them and their organizations to focus on the essential part of the business. They can think strategically, prioritize goals, and take responsibility for achieving them, including eliminating non-essential work that diverts team members’ attention. Effective leaders can maintain their focus and manage their time, attention, and emotions. They play to their strengths while also being aware of and accepting their weaknesses, delegating in areas where they are weak or taking a different path. Focus played a crucial role in being able to launch my app to schedule. I established a list of goals every day and worked hard to accomplish all of them.
5. Empathy: Empathy is vital in fostering trust and loyalty within a company. If you can talk regularly with your employees and partners to understand their fears and desires, you’ll be able to put yourself in their shoes and empathize. It is also crucial to support your employees on what they need to do their jobs well. And when you stand up for them in times of crisis, you’ll increase their desire to perform. Empathy is a crucial part of the skin positivity resources on my app. Understanding others’ emotions/feelings around their skin and mental well-being goes a long way in how you support them through their journey to feeling better and loving their skin every day.

Video: https://youtu.be/2Fa2Mi0g8r8

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I have empowered other young women of color to have a positive role model to emulate through bringing my app to life. I have shown them the value of loving themselves for who they are while educating them on skin conditions and treatment options. As I continue to grow the LoveMySkin app, I am deliberate about increasing diversity, equity, inclusivity, and accessibility to lay the groundwork for a skin wellbeing solution that will work for everyone worldwide. I hope that my innovation project, LoveMySkin™, will continue to utilize new and innovative ways to share my message, grow my app user base, and partner with organizations, institutions, and countries to reduce health inequities in underserved communities globally.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

In addition to providing resources globally through the LoveMySkin app, ranging from skin health to mental wellbeing check-ins, I also created a Skin Positivity petition on Change.org. This petition aims to address the need for a global Skin Positivity Day. I recognize that social media platforms can create a negative space where users feel obliged or pressured to keep up with fake skin standards. However, we can use social media platforms to spread positive messages about our skin. As a 17-year old high school student, I have witnessed this all too often in the school environment. The goal of Skin Positivity Day is about coming out boldly against all types of negative pressures to live a liberated life in your skin! Skin Positivity Day aims to channel social media as a positive space to talk openly about skin conditions and insecurities. Skin is skin. No matter what your skin color or skin type is, we are all in the same boat. Only by joining forces can we overcome all forms of skin stigma.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Oh wow, so many incredible women choices! But, if f I had to pick one, it would be Oprah Winfrey. Oprah has been an inspirational woman of color who has many life experiences herself and has also learned from the life experiences of very diverse people, which is in line with what LoveMySkin embodies. We try to meet people exactly where they are with their skin condition and or skin insecurities.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!

---

Female Founders: Audrey Ajakaye of LoveMySkin On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Candy: Leadership is to help and guide people to a common goal.

Chris: A leader only exists in the presence of followers. The leader-follower relationship is an expression of influence. Leadership is your ability to influence those around you, to shape their thoughts and their behavior. Being a leader enables you to multiply your impact and achieve with others.

As a part of our series about lessons from Thriving Power Couples, I had the pleasure of interviewing Candy Tsiao, Ph.D., and Chris Madden. For the last three decades this husband-and-wife duo have worked for Michelin across Asia, Europe, and the U.S., all while raising their four children (including twins!). Candy is a chemist who has spent most of her career in material design and development, and Chris is an engineer working in tire design. He now leads global strategic projects on R&D efficiency and design for sustainability.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Chris: When we married, Candy was already in R&D and I was in manufacturing. We both wanted an expatriation, but it seemed hard to arrange since we were in such different sectors of the company. I was interested in R&D, but I made the transfer in large part to make it easier for us to go abroad. And that was successful. We’ve spent more than 8 years in international assignments in France, Thailand, and China. I’ve been in R&D ever since.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you two got married?

Candy and Chris: While we were living in Shanghai another American couple invited us to a dinner party. One guest, Frank, was a great conversationalist and almost annoyingly well-informed. No matter the subject, he seemed to already know the key facts and figures. And he asked very perceptive questions about Michelin in China. It was only at the end of the evening we learned he was Frank Langfitt, NPR’s correspondent in China at the time and author of the book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Candy: My first project at Michelin was to survey ways to make a very rigid material. We make our lab material in an internal mixer and my material did not drop out of the mixer because it was too tacky. My lab technician had to use a putty knife to get the material out. The reason is one of the materials had a melting point that was close to the temperature of my mixer. I learned that I need to check the properties of raw material and assess what risks they could bring before doing my studies.

Chris: As a young Industrial Engineer, I had the chance to brief the North American Industrial Director on the need for a major investment project at our factory. My short presentation was a home run and the Industrial Director asked me “to sit next to him and advise him” for the remainder of the meeting. I felt fully empowered, to the point where I was comfortable disagreeing on some points with the Plant Manager, my boss’ boss. Trouble was, the Industrial Director left after the meeting, and I was still there working for the Plant Manager. I learned a great lesson about the importance of remaining humble even when we are empowered by an extraordinary leader.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Candy: Respect for people. It’s one of Michelin’s five values. Especially when managing sensitive topics, the company always makes sure people are treated with compassion and empathy.

Chris: On May 7, 1995 a tornado severely damaged our factory in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Michelin had acquired the Uniroyal Goodrich tire company just 5 years before, and at that time, this factory produced Uniroyal and BF Goodrich tires, not Michelin brand tires. The factory was a major employer in Ardmore, and I think many people were worried about what the damage would mean for the community. It only took a few days for our CEO to announce that Michelin would re-build and strengthen its role in the community. I believe that decision was made mainly on the basis of our core value of respect for people.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Candy: As a materials designer, I’m working on new ways to increase the amount of sustainable materials in our tires, such as recycled materials and materials derived from plants. Our ambition is to make our products out of 100% sustainable materials by 2050.

Chris: I feel lucky to be working on Michelin’s effort to eliminate the environmental footprint of our factories. Tire manufacturing uses organic solvents called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that cause smog when the chemicals evaporate. At Michelin, we’ve dropped our VOC emissions by about 48% in the last 10 years. Our goal is to cut what remains in half by 2030, positioning us to achieve our target of zero by 2050. This is just one of several areas of environmental leadership for Michelin.

What advice would you give to other leaders to help their employees to thrive?

Candy: Be aware of your biases — both conscious and unconscious. We need to let people demonstrate their strengths.

Chris: Pay attention! And adapt your actions and your style to what each person needs. Sometimes there is a hidden issue you have to find and solve. Sometimes there is a blind spot you have to help them see. Sometimes you just need to get out of their way.

How do you define “Leadership”?

Candy: Leadership is to help and guide people to a common goal.

Chris: A leader only exists in the presence of followers. The leader-follower relationship is an expression of influence. Leadership is your ability to influence those around you, to shape their thoughts and their behavior. Being a leader enables you to multiply your impact and achieve with others.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Candy: Not to sound cliché, but my parents. They immigrated from Taiwan to the U.S. and built a better life for us. They never made my brother and me feel there was something we couldn’t achieve. I had the freedom to choose what I wanted to do, and they worked very hard to provide for us.

Chris: I’m grateful to Duke University Professor Alan Biermann for sponsoring me when I wanted to make a special major in Artificial Intelligence. He had a grant from the Army to study voice recognition systems for helicopter pilots. While the software was working well in the quiet Computer Science lab, I was curious how that would translate to a noisy helicopter. Professor Biermann encouraged me to pursue the question, and the Army gave me a recording of a real helicopter sound and measurements of the sound pressure levels so I could test the software in a realistic setting.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Chris: I believe your manager can have an enormous influence on your happiness, whether positive or negative. I hope that each person whom I have served as manager would say that I had a positive impact on their lives and careers. I’ve had the opportunity before to help an employee on their growth and development path, even when they were feeling very down about their career and it was unclear to them and others what their next step would be. Years later, after their retirement, the person came up to me and thanked me, saying that turning point made a huge difference in their personal life as well.

What are the “5 Things You Need To Thrive As A Couple”? Please share a story or example for each.

Candy: Don’t let issues fester. Chris and I come from very different family dynamics. My family will express our feelings quickly where his is more reserved. One day early in our marriage, he kind of blew up on me and it was over something very trivial. Then he went on about all of the things that were bothering him from before. I told him that he needed to tell me when I do things that bothered him and not let them fester.

Chris: Financial intimacy. When we were first married, we decided that our money was OUR money, not his or hers. Since then, our paychecks have always been deposited into the same account and we decide together on all major purchases. Candy helped me learn to become a more careful spender. And around fifteen years ago I started taking our financial planning much more seriously. As a result, money issues are a strength and a source of stability, rather than a strain on our relationship. Remember to find the balance between the relationship and the careers. We both pour a ton of energy and passion into our jobs, but it is clear that our relationship, and more broadly our roles within our family, are categorically more important. Thanks to Michelin we haven’t faced big potential conflicts, but, if we did, I’m sure we’d both choose family over career. To quote a Chinese colleague: “Keep it hot!” 😉 We celebrate our 28th anniversary this month. In our nearly three decades married and with all the distractions raising children, it is easy to fall into routines, take each other for granted, and fail to continue to invest in the relationship. You have to keep dating. How long has it been since you brought flowers home? Or gave your partner a foot massage?

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger!

Candy: Respect for others. I feel that over time we as a society have been hyper focused on doing whatever we want to do and have lost the notion of respect for others. We are becoming more selfish.

Chris: I’d like to inspire a movement of finding common ground on constructive topics — focusing on things that unite and inspire us and encourage us to live up to the values we share. We spend too much time creating dissatisfaction and division and blaming others instead of taking positive action within our own sphere of influence.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Candy: Don’t sweat the small stuff. With a fulltime job and 4 kids, I can’t be worrying about everything. I have to decide what’s important and what’s not. The world will still be standing, my kids will still be happy, and work will still be there if I don’t sweat the small stuff.

Chris: A favorite of mine is this poem by A. E. Housman from A Shropshire Lad, 1896

FROM far, from eve and morning

And yon twelve-winded sky,

The stuff of life to knit me

Blew hither: here am I.

Now — for a breath I tarry

Nor yet disperse apart —

Take my hand quick and tell me,

What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;

How shall I help you, say;

Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters

I take my endless way.

It reminds me of the temporary nature of this life and that our emphasis should be on helping each other. It isn’t our net worth or our prized possessions or our business title that will matter in a few short years when we’re gone. What will matter is how we treated others and whether we left the world a better place than we found it.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them

Candy: I would love to cook a lunch or breakfast meal with José Andrés, of two MICHELIN Starred, minibar, to learn some new recipes and techniques.

Chris: I’d love to meet Frank Langfitt again. He’s NPR’s London correspondent now and recently reported on British reactions to Ted Lasso. Maybe we could catch up over a pint in the pub featured on the show? It would also be great fun to meet Mayim Bialik. I grew up watching Jeopardy! and I’d love to know how the show works behind the scenes. And of course, she was stellar in The Big Bang Theory, too.

How can our readers follow your work online?

Candy: Any time you see a single, extra-wide tire replacing two tires on a large truck, you’re following my work. I helped develop what we call the X One, and it’s designed to help fleets manage fuel efficiency and weight savings.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

---

Lessons from a Thriving Power Couple, With Chris Madden and Candy Tsiao of Michelin North America was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.