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Navigating Healthcare Supply Chain Success: Insights with Marisa Faribaugh · Taking The Supply Chain Pulse

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Hello again everybody.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: This is Fred Krantz from St Onge, with another episode of Taking the Supply Chain Pulse.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Today we have as our guest Marisa Faribault, senior Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer at Advent Health.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Marisa, thanks for being here, and I don't know if you realize this, but I think you're going to be our first guest on Season 2 of our podcast.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: So that's good, we're happy to have you here.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Well, that's great.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the opportunity.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks for the invite, fred, my pleasure.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: You must have had a full slate for Season 1.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Appreciate the opportunity.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the invite, Fred.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: My pleasure Tell us about yourself.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: You must have had a full slate for season one.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've done probably about 40 episodes so far.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, it's surprised me that we've had that many folks in all good folks too.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So tell us about yourself, your background and how know how you work your way to the position you got today.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Oh well, I've been really blessed along the way and I feel like I've been fortunate to have some great mentors and folks working around me, to be able to be here around me, to be able to be here.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I started back in Gainesville Florida that's where actually I'm from and went to undergrad at University of Florida, studied industrial engineering and had a great experience there.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I wasn't sure what I was really going to study initially and thought maybe biomedical engineering, but realized I didn't really like being in the lab all day long and wanted to be around people and so I was fortunate to find that as a major and, you know, really had a great time at UF and learned a lot, and I think that that that discipline really just kind of teaches you how to problem solve, like whatever kind of big problems you know come along the way.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So I've been fortunate to have some training in that in that background.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Then, when I graduated undergrad, I wanted to move as far from Gainesville as possible.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Not know anyone.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: As far from Gainesville as possible, not know anyone.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: So I went to a little food company named Hershey Foods and moved up to Pennsylvania.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I remember my parents dropped me off in the blizzard snow in December.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: It was probably, as they said, one of the hardest things they had to do.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't know a soul there.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: That was wonderful and great.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: I learned a lot about myself, being on you know, being in a place where nobody you know, and learn a lot about companies, how they work, from manufacturing to finance, to engineering, to HR, it, et cetera.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: So it was a great, great opportunity to learn about how companies work and manufacturing works.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And I remember going to my first boss and saying, OK, so we make candy.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Is this what it's all about all day long?
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Is that what work is?
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: And he turned to me and he's like Marisa, we make candy.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Candy makes people happy.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: You make people happy.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, ok, that'll work for me for a while, and, and ultimately I was very I don't know, maybe ready for the opportunity to do something in an area that I felt a little bit more connected to the outcome and connected to people and giving back.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And it was a hard switch though, because there's not a lot of industrial engineers in health care and you know you'd be surprised.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Actually, I think health care could use like a lot more industrial engineers as an industry.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: But I got really fortunate One day my roommate at the time she says to me Risa, there's a job opportunity for an industrial engineer at Shands in Jacksonville.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And I said, oh, I've, I've, I've been to Jacksonville before I could do that that job.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I went online to apply and it was in Gainesville and as somebody from Gainesville who wanted to get out of Gainesville and try something new, I was like, oh, that's not the same as Jacksonville, so I am.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I did apply anyways and I was very fortunate to get selected to work there and learn so much about health care, the language you know it's a whole nother language, acronyms all around.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And what does all that mean?
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: And met some great people, some great mentors along the way.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Conrad's one of them, and you know as he, as he moved into his other roles in his career, he needed somebody to run the operations side as he moved on into Wake Forest.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: And I was fortunate to get that phone call from him.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: I was on maternity leave at the time, first grandchild, living three miles from my parents at the time, their first grandchild, my parents at the time, their first grandchild and got the phone call and, you know, my husband and I really felt like it was the right opportunity for us and so we left Gainesville again and moved on to Winston-Salem where I had the opportunity to lead under and with Conrad throughout that time.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I also had the opportunity to step into M&A for a couple of years there, lead our M&A practice and then, you know, felt that supply chain kept calling you know and kept calling me back, and was also fortunate to get acquainted with the folks here at Advent Health and made that change about five and a half years ago and it's been a wonderful opportunity here.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Um, I was able to really meet so many great people and been on a been on a very fun journey well, that's.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: About three things came up in there that I wanted to comment on.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Number one um, if you ever need a job and want to go back to industrial engineering, st onge has uh, our health care has, I think, right now about 45 people, and what I think is interesting is there are probably five of us of the 45 that have actually been supply chain leaders in healthcare.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: The other folks are industrial engineers mainly, and many of those are.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I get a kick out of our weekly meetings because you have all these 23, 25-year-old people that are all excited and everything and they're learning about healthcare.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: So you've had the opportunity of becoming an industrial engineer and then getting into healthcare and then the whole idea of logical thinking and logical problem solving that is part of the rigor of being an industrial engineer is something that most of us you know I was a corpsman.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: You know I had no supply chain or industrial engineering background.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: I made it up as I went, Not really.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I mean you got.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty cool.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: And the second thing you talked about your mentors and anybody that knows me knows that when I, when I talk about people that I'm impressed with, I'm always talking about you and I'm always talking about my the most impressive young guy I ever met at the time, which was Conrad Emmerich.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So could you tell us about your mentors and tell us about Conrad and what you learned from him?
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Sure, conrad was a great boss and mentor.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: You know he taught me a lot about the industry.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not a supply chain background person, you know.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: So when I stepped into that role I didn't know what a GPO was at the time.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: You know those are new terms for me and you know Conrad was, I think, patient and, you know, a great sounding board, somebody I could ask any kind of questions to.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: And you know he technically taught me a lot.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I learned, you know, about how he connected with suppliers and the community at large, so the external world of you know of what we do, not just the internal into the provider world of what we do.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: He was very kind, he wouldn't get worked up very easily, you know I just I felt he's always been a great, a great friend and mentor and colleague in this industry and to this day we still talk very often.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So I've always appreciated him.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: You know I think my other big mentor, I would say has been my dad.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Over the years.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: You know he's been an awesome mentor and just somebody to always you know that always would listen and and he had a great intuition about him as well.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: You know he could really kind of put himself in my shoes easily and really be able to, you know, not really ever give me the answer which I appreciated, you know but really give me some questions to think about and let me kind of come to my answer and not judge that thinking.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: And so it's been, I've been really fortunate.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: You know, from that standpoint there are so many other great mentors in my life, those are just two of them, but it's been, I've been very fortunate.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Well, that's good I want to get to.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to come back to your relationship with Conrad later, because one of the later questions I have is how difficult is it for a woman to migrate up the ranks of leadership, especially in supply chain?
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: It's changing now.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: There are many more, and I would characterize you as a second-generation group of supply chain leaders.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: You know the people like Peggy Steyer and Teresa Dale and the folks that came before you maybe a half a generation or so probably faced different challenges.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: But I want to get to that and how being able to work with someone like Conrad may have made that pathway a little easier as you went along.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: But before I do that, I wanted to ask about your leadership style.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Are you a hands-on leader or do you find the best people, let them know what's expected of them and give them guidance only when they need it?
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that's evolved over the years, you know, and it depends on what you know, what my role is.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I think I would have said that you know I've started out very hands-on.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I remember when I was working for Conrad I was with Bill Brewer at the time, you know Bill and I were doing a rollout of an inventory management system in the OR at Shands and Bill and I probably spent two or three weeks you know Kaizen 5Sing, you know the whole OR in the evening at like 1am because these cases weren't going on.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, we were like you can't get more hands on than you know being there for every, every step of the way.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: But I think all of that hands on experience allows me to Like have an idea when now, in the role that I'm in, I cannot be hands on, you know, and I do really seek out the very best talent on the team to be able to be extrapolate, you know, to be able to do all of the work.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: But having had that hands-on experience allows me to ask different questions or what you know, the right questions and really seek to understand the work that they're doing in a hands-on way without actually having done that work.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: And so I'm.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: I'm been really, you know, awesomely blessed with some amazing talent that's on our team right now doing just unbelievable work, really accelerating the pace and moving supply chain and our business services area forward.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I learn so much from them every day, you know, and that is an exciting role for me to play.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: I love being able to be that lifelong learner and just continue to have these awesome leaders teach me about their business and figure out a way to make it different and better, and me, I think, with my role in this space, is like taking the obstructions out of the way for them to be able to do the work that they need to do and get it done.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think to answer the short answer is I think I've evolved over time and now know my job is way more in terms of hiring the very best talent, letting them run with it.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that's.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I was talking with Richard Bagley from UC Health a couple of weeks ago and he said that he thinks that his number one challenge is to be able to identify and hire the right talent now.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: And that's especially true because I've said this so many times to people listening to this podcast that when I started out, we outsourced logistics to the distributors.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: We outsourced contracting for at least commodities to the GPOs, and all we needed to do was know how to unload the truck when it backed up to the dock and get the paperwork for receiving done correctly, and then either put the products in the warehouse to distribute them later or take them directly to where they needed to go.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Now things have become so complex that you need to have so many different skill sets available that we have to hire talent that we didn't even imagine was necessary back in the old days.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: So that must be, you know, difficult to find the people you need.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the job is to also influence, like what is higher education teaching our you know, our next generation of leaders?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: And how do we influence that program and how do we make sure people coming out of you know college who have an interest in this space understand it exists and can get the right education and background for it, understand it exists and can get the right education and background for it?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: So I think it's exciting to think about how it changes and make sure that we're, you know, thinking about how we can create the great talent pipeline that we need.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Well, like I say, it's something to be concerned about, especially with Advent.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: You guys, I wrote this.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read what I wrote, because I couldn't say it better than I wrote it.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Advent serves a diverse patient base In Orlando.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: You have young families, middle-aged families, a huge population of retirees, full-time residents, snowbirds and tourists visiting the theme parks.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: How does demand vary, both seasonally and by patient type, and do you have specific strategies to serve each group?
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Wow, you did write it very eloquently.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: It sounds like Orlando is the place to be.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah well, it is.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Half the PGA players live there too.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I forgot that part.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: I think that we're I mean we're we're fortunate to be in some growing markets, which is excellent, you know.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: But I don't know how.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I think everybody's got the same kind of challenges.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: How do you make sure that you're offering what you need to to whatever the community and patient population is in front of you?
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: And I guess, from a supply chain standpoint, you know we, we have to make sure we've got what we need.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: You know, whatever that is, Fortunately, we've been doing this work long enough to understand the demand signals and what's you know, understand a little bit about what the needs are going to be, and so, you know the team does a great job planning for that.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: You know where we need to offer as a, as a provider, or, you know, as AdventHealth in totality.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is niche product and work being, you know, working on right now, that we are trying to meet patients where they need to be met, whether that's in their home, whether that's, you know, in the hospital, whether that's in an ASC, you know, et cetera, and are employing, you know, a number of different strategies, making sure we understand the consumer, how the consumer wants to interact with a patient or with a provider.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: So there's, I think there's a lot of great strategies underway as an organization, from a supply chain standpoint.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: I think we just we just make sure we've got what you know what we need and understand the different channels that we need to get it there.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know how many different care settings are you providing service to.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Do you have an idea of how many, how many locales you're serving on a daily basis?
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: You mean if we include physician offices and ASGs and all that oh.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: I know that for example, we're 55 hospitals in nine states.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: So that's, you know, that's our core, you know inpatient side, and then I mean we're probably over 500 clinics across the organization with more you know, with with a growing ASC footprint and strategy.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: With a growing ASC footprint and strategy, oseds are off-site EDs growing.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean we've got products going in a lot of directions.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and up here in Northeast Ohio, for example, the clinic alone has over 100 locations that it serves and that puts a strain on logistics, planning and all that kind of stuff.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Once again, it's not backing the truck up to the dock and just pulling the stuff off anymore.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: You've got to come up with some complicated strategies to serve those places.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's about scale.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: How do you build something at the foundation that's scalable?
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the way we think about all of the processes that we run at Advent Health.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: You know everything that we're building.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: You know from the design of the systems to the design of our distribution center to the design of you know our value analysis process.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Like everything needs to be scalable.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Right now, we're in a big acquisition mode as an organization and growing considerably, and so everything just needs to continue to figure out how, you know, how do we build the foundation that can scale up?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Well, you make it sound a lot simpler than I would think it is.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: I admire that.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: See, the difference is this gets back to the generational thing we're talking about.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: This is the norm for you.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: This would have been entirely new for us old guys when we got a clinic that was outside of Baptist Hospital in Miami.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: We had to figure that out.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: That was something new.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And now look at Baptist Health of South Florida how big that is and how diverse it is.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's amazing.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So the recent IV crisis is one in a series of never events, such as the IV bag shortage caused by Hurricane Maria, the total disruption caused by the COVID pandemic and, most recently, the two hurricanes.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Do you guys have a formal disaster or disruption planning team and, if so, how does it work?
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: So I would say that we are more embedded disruption and disaster planning into our core operations.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: So everything from how do we manage when things are on backorder, you know whatever the criticality of that backorder from, you know, slight backorder to heavy backorder, very impactful to least impactful, you know.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: But the core of that work is the same.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: It goes through the same committee, it goes through the same sort of notification process and then if it's a critical item, it gets a different escalator at the end of it.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Similarly, on the logistics side, you know same team that runs all of our DC is going to be prepared to respond to Helene, as an example, you know, and get ready to pick and pack two containers to go up to North Carolina within 12 hours.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: So that team is focused on.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: You know how to manage through disaster management in and of itself and then same with the leaders on site there.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: You know those leaders on site are preoccupied with you know when those disasters hit hit how do we fly in?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: You know leaders that might be you know more at a divisional level that need to get on site into that specific location to accompany those site leaders as well and manage through whatever you know crisis might be, and so and then myself included, you know so when the hurricanes hit North Carolina and came through Florida this year, you know I personally stayed on site at our corporate office, spent the night there to make sure that I didn't have disruption in any of the communication channels that I would have needed, that I would have been able to get online, that I could still participate in all of the divisional calls and make sure that if there was any needs that came up unforeseen, you know my team and I would be able to navigate that.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And so you know there's not a separate team to manage the crises.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: It's our team, but it's a preoccupation with how.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: You know how, what is the foundation and what does the process need to be when these events happen, what do we follow so that it doesn't feel like it's just a one-off, like it feels like it's part of okay, we go into this mode, but we've been in that mode before and this is how we operate in that mode.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: So, really proud of the team.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: It's been a.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I think COVID taught us a lot of lessons around that, and you know, I think it's about what did we do with the learnings that COVID gave us, and how do we embed that into our operations now?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a couple things that sort of prompt secondary questions.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: The idea is that there are certain products that are always going to be essential.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I mean IVs.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: You know the lack of IVs affects chemotherapy, it affects high dollar elective procedures.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: There are folks that are really hurting because of this and I'm going to make a generality over 50 years, so I'm going to say this Most of the time it's been my experience that healthcare supply chain has been largely reactive, not proactive.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: In business, especially in manufacturing, there's a term called a plan for every part, which you sort of talked a little bit about the key items.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: How important is an outage of an item compared to what it would mean to our operation?
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Have you sort of set some of these products out, product lines out that you say, hey, we need to have a plan for, say, personal protective equipment that we can kick in if we need to.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Or we need to have a plan to what are we going to do to mitigate an IV shortage like that?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Have you looked at products like that or are you just sort of doing things in general?
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand your question.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: I think that it's less about the products In my mind there is, you know, every product becomes critical at some point and it's more about what's the length of time that you're going to have an outage for and what is the backup, what is the backup options for a lack of that product?
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, in some cases nursing can change their practices and you can get around meeting a certain product out there and so that's a.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: You know, is it, is that a?
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Is that a well-accepted alternative or not?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: And these are questions that I think are kind of like this decision tree you have to kind of go through.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: I personally think every product is critical if it's, you know, if it's not able to be sourced in you know, some elongated period of time.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: So people often say well, what do you?
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: How do you define critical items?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Well, at some point almost every product is critical because it's there for a reason and there is, you know, there is a need for it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: You know I remember grounding pads in the OR getting a run on it a few years ago.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Well, nobody thought those were critical until you don't have them anymore and you can't run cases anymore.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: And so every single product eventually becomes critical.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: It's a matter of how long that stock in front of physicians and nurses.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: All of that's driven by, you know, those earlier questions.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, Are you familiar with any of the software as a service tools that are out there?
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: To give you a heads up, I'll give you an example.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Do you know Charlie Michelli by any chance?
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Example Do you know Charlie Michelli by any chance?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Charlie is my younger brother.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: We worked together at BD Healthcare Consulting and he was one of the first folks that I introduced to a company called Resolink, which is a sort of a horizon scanning company for disruptions, and one of the things that he found by his subscription there was that there was a worldwide manufacturing shortage on bauxite.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Bauxite, of course, is the critical element for the production of aluminum and it was going to affect his crutches and by using this information he was able to, you know, come up with alternative approaches in case there were going to be a problem.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Have you incorporated any of those services into what you do?
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: We are not actively incorporated those yet, but we are moving towards a inventory control tower and getting more demand signals through a partnership in the AI space, and so we're actively working on that work.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: I know that a few organizations are starting to also lean into this and I think that there is a potential for us to really take healthcare supply chain, which has traditionally been decades behind other you know, other industry supply chains into.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: You know, starting to get into that same era, if you will.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: So I'm encouraged, I like that there's a handful or couple handfuls of organizations really beginning to think about this, because once we kind of understand where products are internally in our own system and what the signals are to generate orders externally, I believe we'll be able to start seeing upstream in the chain links, you know, through our suppliers and up to their raw material providers in a more robust way in the future.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: And if you think about any other industry outside of health care supply chain, they're doing that, you know.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Grocery is doing that, I know.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: When I was at Hershey Foods, we were able to see where our commodities you know, our commodity suppliers were at in their supply chain, and so that and that was way long ago, you know.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: So we, we are behind.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I think we have an opportunity to catch up, and when more providers are doing this type of work, it will be signaling to our suppliers that we're ready of work.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: It will be signaling to our suppliers that we're ready.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: We're ready.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: We want you guys to invest and be able to share with us those signals further upstream, because, at the end of the day, look, we're a massive consumer of finished goods and we expect and, by the way you know, at the end of that chain is a person and so how do we ensure that we have all of what we need at any given time for our communities and our patients?
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: And so we've got to be able to see upstream and make sure we understand where there's going to be disruptions, and it can't just be a phone call like that, that that's not going to work in the future.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I hope more people start to realize that, because I think that a lot of things could be mitigated if people took that approach.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: You know, um, when you were at hershey, uh, did they still have the uh hershey's kisses on on the street lights?
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: they did, and it smelled like chocolate, um, and in fact they had hershey bowls of bowls of candy.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: It was actually people's jobs to go around filling up all the conference room candies because there were a lot of buildings in hershey that are all part of hershey and and all of those areas had had unique and non-unique candies in them at all times.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: And people always ask me did you get tired of eating the candy?
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: And no, I did not.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: There was always a different candy to try.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, when COVID hit, Richard Bagley was at Penn State, yeah, and he worked with St Onge and with Hershey to sort of this regional coalition of emergency supply management for smaller non-acute health care systems there.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: So Hershey pitched right in.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: They were really a great part of the solution.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: So my last topic of questions is what I was talking about earlier Today.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: More and more VPs of supply chain are women.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: I wanted to have a panel discussion with first-generation women supply chain leaders and second-generation ones like yourself, to see if the fight for recognition has eased Now.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I've always been upset about having to talk about this, because by this point in our nation's history, this should not be even a remote topic.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Things should be just about positions earned by being good at what you do.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: But how would you characterize your rise?
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Do you think you had to fight against the wind or do you think it was eased by the fact that you had a strong mentor that was supporting you, like Conrad Well?
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: I mean I don't know if the answer is one or the other there.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that it certainly helps to have great mentors and sponsors.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: You know, not just mentors, but people who are willing to actually grow you and push you, and you know have, grow you and push you and you know, have.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: I think the sponsorship part is a probably a undervalued component of somebody's either ability to contribute to someone else's career or when you look at their career, and the sponsors are the people that actually have the ability to make changes and and and fight for um, you know that person, on behalf of that person, at what?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: When I when that person is not there, um, and I do definitely.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: I definitely know that conrad was an amazing sponsor.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Um, that that aside, I would say you know a couple things.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: One is is I just didn't care really, or haven't ever cared, like whatever, if I'm in a room full of females or males, like I don't really care or notice and it just, I just am.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: I've always been way more focused on what's the job at the at hand and what's the answer needed from the job at hand, like let's focus on that and not the rest of the stuff, and so I've always just found myself being somebody who wants to be very prepared and wants to work hard and, you know, ready to roll up my sleeves of whatever the challenge is in front of me, sleeves of whatever the challenge is in front of me.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: And I don't know if I'm better off or worse off in my career because I'm a female or male, I don't, you know or I just kind of always just done whatever it is I've I've needed to do, I guess.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: That being said, I feel like everybody's got a different story and I've been allowed to and just humbled in mentoring many females along their career journeys and males, for that matter, who have experienced, you know, people in their worlds that are not supportive or holding that or seeing that, you know, as an impediment to their ability to move on.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: And don't get me wrong, I mean I've encountered my own male counterparts who have tried to put me in a box.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I just haven't cared, like I don't.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: When those things happen, I just move past it Like we just keep moving.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I things happen, I just move past it like we just keep moving, I just ignore it and move past it.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: And I think that sometimes those females who are with you know, in very challenging situations, you know they need support and they need to hear that.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: You know a you can get out of your situation.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: B you know there's there are other, there are other places to go.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: We don't have to work through that or see, just stop caring.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Whatever you know, whatever that, whatever the right answer is in everybody's different situation, and I've been honored and humbled and excited to work with different leaders on their journeys and learn so much, and I do think that there's elements of that that exist out there and you know it's, I do.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: I do also agree that it's a changing landscape.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: You know that SMI just last week and, man, I tell you, there's a lot of great, strong female leaders there, and and I have a huge degree of respect for for everyone there, not just the female ones, the male ones too they're doing a phenomenal job as well, and so I think we're all on the journey.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: We all sit on the shoulders of those that have come before us and we all can give to the next generation.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Whether that's male or female, it doesn't matter.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I think there's value in it regardless.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's very important.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Your last statement is the responsibility to pay it forward to help other people.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Some folks just don't see the need for that, but I've always thought that if there's anything I can do to help somebody that I believe is worth the help you know that is worthy of the help then I will do that.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: So my last question is what would you like to talk about that I forgot to ask about?
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think the new space that I've found myself speaking into a lot right now is on environmental sustainability.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I think that there is a role to be played in health care supply chain in this space outside of our healthcare industry you know Walmart, microsoft, you know Amazon.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: They are moving towards caring and leaning into all right, how do we make a difference in the environment?
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: You know there's a generational impact to this work and I think that in health care we have, we live in the supply chain space and environmental sustainability is synonymous, basically, with supply chain, because it's all about, you know, upward raw materials and production that contributes to our carbon footprint overall, and so I think that there's a role and a responsibility, and education right now is important for healthcare supply chain leaders to be leaning into this space.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: I think it will continue to be an important aspect, regardless of the political climate around it.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Marisa, for being a guest today and I want to wish you continued good luck and success.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: And I made it a point that I was not going to say anything at all during this interview about the fact that we Hurricanes kicked the Gators' butt this year at the beginning of the season, but not that it matters, of course, but I just Well, you know, we can't be winners all the time.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: We have to sometimes let other people have a chance.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: So we're just doing our duty right now.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: We'll be back up that's right?
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I hope so don't you wait, okay, maria, thank you, marisa.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being, for being with us.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the conversation, thanks thanks again.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the opportunity take care take care.