Senior Vice President, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
What makes for the qualities of a Moves Mentor?
I’m a big believer in the concept of the tribe of mentors. Timothy Ferriss wrote a book on the tribe of mentors. High-level, what do you need from a mentor? You need a kind of zooming-out perspective, so you can kind of get above the fray and see what’s out there. And you need someone you can learn from, and it needs to be someone who also dares to be honest with you and hold the mentee accountable for where they have work to do. Which we all do, right? There’s nothing wrong with having work to do. We all have work to do. That’s why I believe in the concept of a tribe of mentors, because having a singular person that can help you with many different aspects of your career — I think that’s a tall ask. Rather than a form of mentor/mentee-ship, where you seek people out that you admire, you can learn from, and then you can have targeted discussions. That doesn’t take away from the fact that a good mentor can be super helpful. You can go deeper, you can develop a trusting relationship, and do the things I talked about: zoom out, get a big perspective, maybe look at things from a different angle, and help people work through whatever blocks them. Or help them open doors when they have ideas and opportunities for where they want to go.
In your opinion, should mentorship be a company requirement or a personal giveback?
Definitely a giveback, because I don’t think you can enforce something. It has to be something that’s both given and received with pleasure. If it’s a requirement, I worry that either the mentee or mentor will not be as committed to doing the work. And then everyone is wasting their time.
But often in corporations and other structures, that can include giving up personal time, which people are not so giving of, for all kinds of reasons. Without making mentorship a corporate requirement, are there opportunities missed?
Again, I don’t like requirements, but I think there is a middle ground. I think there’s a difference between making something a requirement and making something encouraged. If you encourage it, you are hopefully communicating that it is important, and valued, and value-adding. I also think that not having time, for me, is an insufficient answer. Because it ultimately comes down to priorities. And we’ve always heard, if you want something done, go ask a busy person. Or if you want something done, go ask a working mom. So, it is ultimately about how you choose to spend your time. And we hear over and over again that being a mentor is not just a giving exercise, there is also a receiving, because of the opportunity to work with somebody, and the mentor — not the mentee, but the mentor — typically will get something out of the relationship. It is a two-way street. I also do think we have a bit of a responsibility to pay it forward. So, again I’m not a fan of a requirement (but that also doesn’t work well with my personality type). But I absolutely think there can be value in having a mentorship program, if you show with your actions that it’s valued and value-adding.
It’s a two-way street: a mentee can give you as much as you give them, right?
Yeah, but I wouldn’t necessarily be that vocal about it being a two-way street. I would venture to say that if done right, it will become a two-way street, and part of that is to be honest with the mentee and set boundaries with the mentee. In my mind, the mentee kind of owns meetings. They need to be prepared. They need to show up. They need to know what they want to work on. They also need to know what they’re unwilling to work on and then be engaged in the relationship. And so in my mind, the mentor-mentee relationship is actually primarily driven by the mentee. And if done that way, it in a way automatically becomes more bidirectional, and it does not become as much of a time constraint on the mentor, who will often be a more senior person who may or may not have more time constraint. Realistically, you meet what, an hour every couple of months? Most of us can find an hour every couple of months.
In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle of totalitarianism. In the twenty-first century, the paramount moral challenge was the struggle of fairness and gender equality around the world. Why is gender equality even a challenge, especially in the enlightened Western world?
That’s a tough one. I think history matters. Women didn’t really enter the workforce until the 50s, 60s, and even 70s. So one would venture to say that in the twentieth century it was not necessarily an expectation or a norm that women would work outside the home in a full time capacity. In the twenty-first century, it is moreso a norm that women work outside the home in a full time capacity. And some even do multiple jobs. Especially in America, we have many underpaid jobs. So if you look at it through that historic lens, the twenty-first century is really the first century where we have to contend with the expectation is that men and women are in the workforce, and women are, historically speaking, new additions to the workforce. So I think we’re still figuring it out. If you have a work system that has been designed by men, and for men, for centuries, and we’ve been around for eighty years, it makes sense if we haven’t quite figured it out. So let’s figure it out.
And is equality such a hard question for most people to bear?
Again, maybe it shouldn’t be, but the reality is that society is gendered from a very early age. First of all, I struggle with a society where we have a binary view of men and women. We don’t have just men and women. We have gender nonconforming, we have trans people, we have bi, et cetera. In addition, within the continuum of being a man and being a woman, there will be a great level of overlap with how we see the world, how we interact with the world and how we show up. So I struggle with the binary perspective and I also feel it gets us into a them-versus-us situation, which I don’t think is helpful. The way I prefer to look at it is through a true equality lens. Which is, we need to work with every single person to maximize their capability within who they are, whatever that means with regards to gender presentation, and preferences. And so, that for me, is the shift. The shift is not men versus women or the workforce changing to include women, or women becoming more like men, whatever. I think it’s a matter of true equality, where there is room for everyone to bring their whole selves to work and succeed like that. And I think that for me is the goal, and I struggle with how to best have that discussion, and I debated long and hard even with my daughters. Because there is a history, and we should not ignore history. When we do that, we risk creating division. I can say from my personal lived experience, growing up in Denmark where there would probably be more gender equality, at least when I grew up in the 70s, I never questioned that I had an opportunity or that I belonged at the table, as we say here in America. I never questioned that.
And I think that helped me and has helped me in my career here in the US. I also have a partner, a husband, and I have been the primary breadwinner and he has been the lead parent. So he has embraced many of the more traditional female roles and I have assumed some of the more masculine roles in that relationship. And we flip back and forth. I’m still mom and he’s still dad. That works for us. That may not work for others. I think a heteronormative couples actually could learn a lot from looking at same-sex couples with regards to that balance of how they organize their lives about child-rearing, parenting, who pays the rent, how you pay rent, who does what. And because there are fewer, let’s call it pre-prescribed expectations, in a high-functioning relationship it’s a discussion, it’s a negotiation. As a working mom, there were a lot of oughts and shoulds and coulds that I let go of. There are a lot of traditional mom things that I have not done simply because I did not have the time, I chose not to take the time, and I could rely on my husband, who did not do it the way I would have done it…but he did it.
Was there a defining moment of experience in your life that led you to where you are today? And can you say what that was?
Well, there were probably two defining moments. My high school chemistry teacher, who taught me about the benzene molecule. And I thought it was the most fascinating thing how the electrons in the benzene molecule work together. And that is, in a nonlinear fashion, what made me a chemical engineer, which is what led me to my current role. And the other thing was meeting my husband, who’s American. And he’s the reason why I immigrated into America. And I needed a job close to home, and I was lucky enough that that was Regeneron, and I never left.
If you weren’t challenged, you wouldn’t be there. Is that correct?
Right. I was incredibly fortunate. When I started at Regeneron twenty years ago, we were about five hundred people, we were struggling financially, we had no money, and a year in we had thirty percent layoffs, still struggling. Now, twenty years later, we are fifteen thousand people, we’re a global company, we have twelve approved drugs with billions in sale from our flagship. Being in an organization with that constant change and growth has worked very well for me because no day is ever the same. There has been ample opportunity to constantly grow and evolve, going from no money, five hundred people, and no drugs to ample revenue, twelve drugs, and fifteen thousand people. If you don’t like change, Regeneron is not a good place to work.
What do you think is the number one action as a society we can take that helps empower women and equality?
High quality affordable childcare. In the state of Alabama, I heard a story about one town where they have twelve thousand kids that need childcare, but they only have three thousand spots. And it’s in a part of the country where they have a lot of shift work. There is no opportunity for overnight or late night childcare. That means that a parent will need to stay home, and that parent is still typically a woman. And childcare is very expensive. So high quality, affordable childcare, I think is a major movement to provide a little bit of that breathing room for the family so that they can figure out how to organize themselves and to enable a home with what is probably two working parents. If you have to leave a five-o-clock on the dot because daycare closes, it is so stressful. If you know that you can stay just twenty minutes longer, then I just think the whole grind of it is gonna be very different.
I also think it would be very very useful as a society if we look at our work life more as a long-term, and remember that it’s a long journey, not a sprint. And what I mean by that is as life ebbs and flows, especially when we have little children, or when we have struggling teenagers, or if we have something going on ailing parents, whatever, if there would be an opportunity to go part-time for a short amount of time. To get things evened out and settled down. And then we can re-engage. And have that be expected and normal where we can still benefit from the amazing brains and care and creativity of these workers, be it men or women, and they can take care of life outside of work, while still being taken seriously. There is a bit of a stigma of the thought process like if I take time off to take care of a family member, or a child, I am not considered as a serious contender for career progression. And I think it’s a very shortsighted way to look at it, because typically you will be looking at a couple of years. And typically many of us will be working for 45, 50 years. So, if a couple of years is without working 120 percent every day, I think society would benefit from allowing that, and it would give us a bit of breathing room to be human.
Can you share with us what’s been the best piece of advice that you’ve ever been given?
Two. The first one is, eighty percent of your success is defined by who you are, and not what you know. And that is to say, while what you know will be the entry ticket, so to say, how you apply your skills, how you show up, how you work with others, is really going to define your success. As an example, we’ve all probably met the brilliant lone wolf that couldn’t work with anyone. That is an example of all the skills being there, but the how is lacking. So, eighty percent of your success is how you show up. Be helpful, be kind. Be respectful. Work hard, solve problems. Let’s work together.
The other piece of advice is focus on your area of control. Focus on your area of control, work really really hard to solve problems that you actually have an opportunity to solve. And don’t worry about things you can’t solve. Because I think, I see a lot of people spend a lot of mental capacity being frustrated, irritated, exacerbated about what senior management does, or what the neighboring department does, or what whatever does. And if it’s something you can’t change because maybe you have the wrong role or the wrong position or the wrong title, let it go. Figure out a way to work with it. I’m not saying suffer in silence; you can question it, you can bring it up. But you can choose to let it go or you can choose to leave if you can’t let it go. But spending a lot of mental energy on worrying about things that are outside of your area of control, it’s just a lot of work and you’re just going to drain your joy.
Do you think a lot of that comes from experience?
Yeah. Maybe. Yes.
What would you tell your fifteen year old self today?
I don’t know. I don’t have anything I want to tell my fifteen year old self. I think life has to be lived and experienced. No. nothing.
Who do you admire the most and why?
It goes back to the tribe of mentors. I have a number of people I admire in small ways. So picking a single person is just not how my world works. I mean, there’s been so many inspirational leaders, moments in the history of mankind, so I would hate to pick one. Because there are elements to admire in so many people. The person that comes to mind…Martin Luther King, I think, was a great, great figure because he dared to take on the system in a nonviolent fashion, and was brilliant at organizing people, and was brilliant at motivating and inspiring people, and was adamant about avoiding the them-versus-us. There was no getting even; it was about getting equal. And I think it’s admirable, with the extent of oppression, to be able to lead with that amount of love and clarity in your heart. That is impressive. I think Nelson Mandela had some of that as well. I’ve been thinking of him these days because the ANC is not doing so well in the ongoing elections in South Africa. That’s a legacy there. And both of them were flawed men in their own way. So the ability to lead in an altruistic way, and take on very big systemic challenges, and provide a positive vision for the future — these are some of the things that would be guiding principles in some of the people that I admire.
