Chris

So welcome to Trials to Transformation, where we explore the journeys of leaders who have been tested and ultimately triumphed in the face of challenges. So today, I am incredibly thrilled to have Carrie Gallman, our executive Vice president, general counsel and Chief policy Officer, joining us. Cari’s legal acumen and natural leadership abilities are critical to how we navigate the complex policy dynamics that we have today and advocate for people and innovation, and ultimately help patients prevail across our many years of partnership.

I have seen how Cari embodies integrity, drives impact, and overcomes challenges with poise and grace. And so, Cari, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Excellent. So thanks for being here. You're going to share your story. I know a lot of the story. But, let me start when you're not at work.

I know you're cheering on three amazing children, so I'm going to start with a heavy hitting question. Did you always dreamed that your daughter would grow up to portray a donkey?

Cari

No. But thank you for the question. And again, thank you for having me here today. So a little bit of context. My daughter Ella is 13 and she recently played the donkey in her school play, Shrek. And I, it was a very important role. And I was as I was sitting there watching her. And I do think that she is the best donkey ever.

As I was sitting there watching her, I was so struck by a number of things, including her fearlessness. And that when she was auditioning for the role, it didn't dawn on her that she needed to go for Fiona. She wanted to go for the role that she thought was the funniest and the most impactful. And I was just so happy for her that she lives in a world where she felt free to do that, and then she was truly fearless on stage.

So I was absolutely a beaming mama. I was at all of the shows and I can't wait to see her next performance.

Chris

That's fantastic. Well, speaking of new roles, there's a lot to celebrate when you look across your ten years of contributions at BMS and now you're starting as General Council. So tell us about the opportunity that you see ahead as you take on this new role. And what you're learning as you go.

Cari

Well, as you and I'm discussed, I think this is an incredible opportunity and one that I am so grateful for. And in part, it's because Sandy has built such a tremendous organization. And so as we think about how to progress our law department, which is more than just lawyers, right?

There's so much in that as well as the bringing together of policy and government affairs and legal. What I think we really have the opportunity to do is really accelerate how we support this company and how we help to navigate the outside world. And so I'm really still learning how we're going to do that, but a couple areas that are of critical importance and that I'm thinking about.

Right one. When you think about AI and data, we know that AI and data are how we are going to accelerate how we do everything that we do. And that is a really complex framework, both in terms of the laws that we need to interpret now and the laws that we need to set both in the US and outside the world.

And I think that's one place that the collective law and public policy department can really work to accelerate the company. And there's others, right. Just simplifying what we do. Making sure that we're making it easier. Having been on the other side for almost two years, I've really seen the strengths of our department, as well as the ways in which we can get even closer to our business and make sure that we are really working at the end of the day, to serve our company and serve our patients in terms of learning.

One thing that I've really learned from my Corporate Affairs role is the import of learning and getting strong people around you and really learning from them. And so that's what I'm doing. I'm spending time learning what we do, how we do it, what this company needs, and making sure that we're approaching what we do from that's what I'm learning every day. Sometimes when I mean to, sometimes when I don't. But every day.

Chris

Well, you certainly in taking on your previous role learning was a big be sure to get you up to speed very quickly on an area you didn't know so well. And even with your extensive experience, I think it highlights something that important for all of us, which is that there's always opportunities for us to learn. And if you go back through the earlier chapters of your career from the outside in, it is a journey marked by incredible accomplishments Princeton, Harvard, politics, private practice, the leadership journey that you've had here at BMS. Kind of take us behind the scenes and talk to us about any of the challenges that were part of that path.

Cari

Well, what I appreciate about this conversation in general is that when we talk about our careers, we almost always talk about those successes. And I'm really proud of those successes. You know me, anyone who knows me, I'm constantly going, go, Tigers! And so those are I have had great success and I'm grateful for that. There's been a lot of challenge. So most people know I talk about this off. And my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was young. And that's why this journey and why being here has meant so much to me. And she's still alive. And I'm so grateful for that.

What we don't talk about is the fact that she had a lot of surgeries and a lot of treatments, which left her pretty much greatly debilitated and disabled for most of my life. And so when I and it flared up at different times. And so when I was in college, actually my first two years at Princeton, she was really sick again, and to the point where, she ended up not being able to work. She lost her business. We actually lost our home. We lost almost everything. And I ended up having to take a few years off of college to both take care of her and also, frankly, to save the money, to go back to school. And so my mother always says, and you've heard me say this, if you can't fix it, feature it. And so at the time, that's obviously not good news, right? This was not something that I was excited about. But it really taught me some amazing things. So I ended up working three jobs. I worked at the Cheesecake Factory because it's how I made money. And it actually taught me so much. It taught me about the value of immediate customer service. Right? If I foresaw the needs of my customers, I made more money faster. So you really start to learn to to to try to predict what people need and be willing to offer it to them. But then again, can't fix it. Feature it. I use the time to actually get jobs that would also help the resume, but they didn't pay as much.

So I worked at a policy organization, actually at a PAC and then ultimately campaign, and I worked at sort of a think tank, basically, this is the very beginning of the internet. I'm dating myself. They were so impressed that I could use this even before Google, so I could use like Yahoo and AOL to start looking up things and writing position papers.

And so from that, I learned a lot, right? I learned frankly and fundamentally about the things that are really important. Right. Tangible goods will come and go. But your health is so critical. Your family is so critical. And sort of knowing that you believe in yourself are really, really critical. And so I try to remember that, also, I can get over almost anything, right? With enough hard work and enough luck. I mean, there was some luck in getting some of those jobs, but it really did let me know that there's almost nothing I can't accomplish if I'm not willing to put my head down and try. It doesn't mean it's always going to be easy, doesn't mean it's going to go how I want it to.

But that experience has really given me that sort of moment when things seem really hard, almost nothing I've experienced since then will be as hard as that. And so it's been really tremendous experience. And then I did get to go back and I did get to graduate. And my mom is still here today. And I appreciated it so much more.

And so it's actually a story that I'm now really proud of. Certainly not something I looked forward to or would have wished on anyone, but it has greatly contributed to, I think, how we've been able to accomplish what I have.

Chris

You should be proud of it. It's an incredible journey, an incredible story, and I think there's so much embedded in that. You remind us of the sort of phrase we use around here, which is who are you working for? It also makes me think, though, about who you work with, and I wonder if you could tell us about a time where real mistakes had real consequences for you and what it taught you. And again, you can go back to a high school project that didn't go well, or high stakes litigation. And I mean anywhere in between. Dealer's choice.

Cari

There are so many. So I will speak actually, in that same time period, it was my first real job and I was at this political action committee, a PAC at the time. It was a very high profile PAC. It actually there was a show, The West Wing, and they mentioned this PAC on the West Wing. Like that's how important the PAC was. And I had been promoted from an intern to sort of an entry level person running, donations and donation campaigns. And so a few months in, we had a major campaign and it involved a significant mailing, and we needed to mail these, these solicitations to really high donors and have all this information in, in them. And I wanted to be cool. And I was still trying to show the interns that we were still friends, and I was still like them, and I wasn't, you know, I wasn't going to become management. And so we watch TV. I let them watch TV in the conference room while we did the mailer. And someone I don't know who doesn't matter. Someone put the wrong packet in the wrong envelope. And so they sent a very high donor, some other very high donors, personal information with their giving amount to two different people. So it did not go well. And so that donor called the head of the PAC, and I heard the person yelling through the phone because my office was not far and you could hear it like 30ft away. And a few weeks later I got fired. Because frankly, I they had lost the confidence in my ability to really manage this job and to be able to understand the new responsibility I had taken on. And so it was an incredible learning, was the only job I've ever actually been fired from. And it was an incredible learning about one assuming the responsibility that you have, not taking it for granted. And while obviously we all want to be liked and we want our teams to want to work with us, at the end of the day, we're there for a purpose and an end, and there's a way to do that in a way not to, the story ends well, which is I ended up getting a job on a campaign, and the, the we had a high profile speaker for an event, and she had to cancel at the last minute.

And so I called the PAC, and I actually asked the head of the PAC, the one who had to fire me to come speak, and she did, and she came. And we filled this ballroom in Philadelphia with about 500 people. And she came over to me at the end and she said, you've done a tremendous job, young lady. I see that you've learned from your experience. Keep going. And so that was an amazing moment. But, oh, yes, I've had many, many mistakes, and some of them for which I have paid dearly.

Chris

Well, thank you for sharing it. Too often I think we hear the headlines, but, we don't oftentimes hear stories like that. And those can be equally or more telling than the successes. I think they show, in part, your true character and how comfortable you are comfortable you are being uncomfortable. And I think that's important. So carry as you build your teams and you're going to be building and continuing to add to the team you have now, how do you identify the kind of integrity that you sort of alluded to just there and see beyond what's on someone's resume?

Cari

Well, that's a really good question. So first, I appreciate some of what you've done in this space. Right. I've learned over time I can teach skills. Obviously certain skills are fundamental. There are certain things and certain background knowledge that you need. But I can teach skills. But I can't teach necessarily is integrity. I can't teach behaviors. And I can't teach really coming to work every day trying to drive this forward and caring about the mission. And so those are the things that I now really, really look for. I look for people who are creative, who care about what we're trying to do, who want to work across the enterprise, who don't necessarily care about always being in the room and getting the credit, and who care more about lifting their colleagues up and lifting the company up than about themselves, and understand that the reward comes from that.

I learned that a very hard way. There was one moment I was here. I was at BMS, and I had had the opportunity to build my oncology team, and there was a lawyer and her resume was amazing. I mean, she had gone to the school, she'd had the clerkship, she'd been at the firms. And so I fell in love with her resume before I met her.

And then we met her and we went through the interview process, and there were some real red flags. Right. We asked the interview questions about. Tell us a time. And I should have seen it, but I didn't. I was just so determined from before I met this candidate to when she got here that she was going to be my higher. And six months in, all the flags were there. She undermined her colleagues. She constantly said no to things that weren't risks and then got into power struggles with the colleagues that we were trying to serve. And it became about her being right as opposed to moving the company forward. And so then I had my first experience having to let someone go.

And so that was a really hard learning. But from then I have learned that looking at those characteristics, that personality, etc., the ability to have the drive, but also really the desire and will to be here is far more important. And I've never made that mistake again. But it was a rough one to learn.

Chris

Yeah the intangibles matter and all that shines is not gold, as it turns out.

Cari

Exactly.

Chris

So hiring certainly presents some difficult choices. You just highlighted, an example of that. Another tough call that we all have to make is around competing priorities. So how do you decide what gets your focus at any given moment and grapple with the reality that you can't do everything?

Cari

So I put this into two buckets. There's how you prioritize work work over work, and then how you deal with work over the rest of life. Work over work while difficult in the moment, I actually find is not that hard. Once I can take a step back and remember I am here. My goal is to get medicines to patients who need them as quickly and directly as I can. I do that through compliance. I do that through legal. I do that from corporate affairs, through comms, through policy. But that's my goal. And if I always have that lens, it helps, right? So there are times when if you're thinking about it from a risk function, what is the highest risk to the company in terms of either if we do it and it goes wrong, or if we don't do it, or what is the most significant import to the company from a business perspective, those areas should absolutely get my attention fastest and for the longest period of time.

And then there's also the ones that it's not necessarily the immediate risk, but the long term. Right. If you think about the work that we've done around Medicaid with Cobenfy. Right. We were thinking in the Karuna team was thinking years ahead of the policy changes that needed to be made in order to make sure that patients have access to that medicine as quickly as they can, without having to have as many negative sort of experiences before they get there.

And that's also really important work, even if it's not right in front of you. So that's how I balance those things. What is most important, both short term and long term, to the company, and how do I prioritize my time? Where it's harder is outside of work, right? As you mentioned, I have three kids, I like them, I like to do other things.

Cari

I like to spend time with them. And so I learned this lesson, you know, and you also need to spend time on yourself. Yeah. So I will always prioritize health. I will always prioritize my family. And then I will prioritize work in that order.

Chris

And that's the way you should do it. And Cari, I think I've had the great pleasure of working with you over quite a number of years now. And, I'm looking forward to seeing you in this new role, because your story, how you approach work and how you approach life is so inspiring to so many. And I count myself among those. So thank you for doing that.

Cari

So can we switch?

Chris

Sure.

Cari

Can this can I? Can I not be the only one

Chris

Sure! Fire away.

Cari

Okay I'm not going to hold back.

So you've been CEO for more than a year and a half. Now we're heading into two years. And I think it looks so effortless at times. Right. It does. But so what are some of the hardest days you had and what's maybe what's humbled you? What have you learned?

Chris

Well, I think you've highlighted a few of the things that I would I would point to. I think the hardest days are when something goes wrong. And that sounds obvious, but you know, when and when you're in this job and something goes really well, the conversation is we we did this. We accomplished this. When something goes wrong, it's human nature. If nothing else to say, I could have done something differently. I could have. And you know, this, this idea that the buck stops, it kind of really does stop here. And you kind of look left and you look right, and you're the last person standing. And so those days when things have gone super duper sideways, those are the days when it's when it's particularly challenging. What I've learned in part, I've learned how to deal with that. Because a number of people coming into this job highlighted that that was going to be a challenge. And the way I've dealt with it is to go back to first principles. Almost none of us who manage people do a lot ourselves. We do it through our teams. And there's great advice that I was given when I joined Bristol because I had I had worked on a team of a few hundred people and my first team, as you know, when I joined BMS it was 3000, a huge increase, and I was reluctant to even interview for the job because I thought that's going to be too big. And somebody said, look, the way to think about this is imagine a house with lights. And when you work on a small team, it will light goes out in the house, you can go and you can change the light bulb. The difference is you have to think of a household of light switches where the objective is you flip your light switch and what happens is your team flips their light switches and they in turn do the same with their teams. And eventually all the lights come on. But you can't you can't get in the mindset of you're changing the individual light bulb. You got to get to a place where you feel comfortable, that you've got a team of people that when you flip your switch, they flip their switches and that reminder that it's not about me, it's about the team. And then I can rely on the team to get work done. That's been the biggest learning. I knew it intuitively, but it's so obvious in this job.

Cari

So that that's incredible advice for people who have teams. And again, I appreciate you sharing that because everyone it always looks like it just goes so smoothly. Right. But how do you what advice would you give for people in the company or in the room as they're thinking about how to deal with a curveball? Right. When those things happen that don't go well, when somebody doesn't turn on their light switch, what what do you do to move on?

Chris

Well, I think the first thing you do is you and you alluded to this in your, one of your answers is you step back and you say, what can I learn from that? I've gone from, look, I don't I don't look forward to things going wrong. I don't want things to go wrong. But they are such a gift when they when they go wrong. And you can step back and say, what did I learn from that? Like, what would we do differently? Because I will tell you, when I look back on my career, I've learned more from the mistakes that I've made than the things that have gone well.

I, I've told the story before. I interviewed for a job many years ago before I came to Bristol. Obviously. And in my on my resume, there was a job I had for six months, and, it was I should never have taken the job. It was a miserable decision. And it was even worse while I was there. And I ended up quitting after six months. And I was interviewing for this job, and I glossed over that experience, which was on my resume. And the guy interviewed me and said, go back. Tell me about that experience. And as I described it, he smiled. And at the end he said, look, you're not getting this job very clear about. But he said, I'm going to give you some advice. It's going to be helpful for you. Don't ever skip over the things on your resume that didn't go well because you learn more in those six months than you did in the previous ten years at your first company, I bet. And you know, as I thought about it, he was right.

learned a ton. So take to take the learnings from that. Don't you know, don't look for things to go wrong. But when they go wrong, learn from it.

Cari

I always say to people, I try not to make the same mistake three times, because the first time I have to test like I have to learn from it and test to see if that was really what happened or if there was something else. If I do twice, then by that point I should really learn that it was a mistake and then I don't make it again. But it's twice. It's not once, it's twice.

Chris

Yeah, by the third time you got a clear trend.

Cari

and then it's done right? Yeah. But you really learn by testing. It's just experimenting. So switching gears, I've actually always wanted to ask you this. I've never asked you this question. At what point, at some point you had to have an inkling that you had a real chance at being CEO before. Was it before they told you? And so one, at what point in your journey did that start to become a possibility for you, and did it change anything about your mindset?

Chris

Well, it happened very late for me. You know, when I joined BMS to tell you how far away I was from thinking I was going to be CEO. I didn't buy a house for a year because I thought for sure this company was going to develop antibodies to me, or I would develop antibodies to the company. And this whole situation wasn't going to pan out.

Even when I with the US, I ran our U.S. business that had gone well. And then I thought, well, you know what? I'm going to get some international experience. And then then I got things are going to go sideways. And then I got to leave. And, you know, fortunately things continue to go well, but I always had this view that I was going to go and probably move back to the West Coast and take a small CEO job at a biotech. And I would say the moment when I began to think about this job was, interestingly enough, I had been approached by a small biotech in Southern California, and it was sort of the perfect job. It was a therapeutic area. I knew well, I knew the board of directors pretty well from prior jobs that I had had, and so kind of was the one if I were going to leave, it would have been the one.

I'd gone for, and it forced me to step back and say, what do I want? And I'd been at the company for 7 or 8 years. I kind of could see where things were going and and it forced me to step back and say, you know what, I love this company. I love the work that we do. I love the potential to have impact at scale, which you can't get in a small company necessarily.

And I knew the company would be going through a period where having more people around who really deeply cared about what we do here to be part of the solution would be important. And that was the moment I said, you know what? I'm going to stick this thing out and see where it goes. I still didn't know I was going to get the job, but I knew that if the job were available, I wanted it.

And and again, that was relatively late, but that was really the moment before then it was all about kind of optionality and making sure I was still doing things, I was learning, and as long as I was growing and felt like I was learning something that was good enough.

Cari

It's interesting in there because I always say to people, you know, it's important to make sure that you're here because you want to be here, not because you think you have to be here, right? So when you know that moment like, I'm here because this is where I really want to be, that's a profound moment. That's really empowering.

Chris

And those moments come whenever the alternative is the thing you thought you wanted.

Cari

Yeah.

Chris

And and so it really did force a kind of come to religion conversation, as it were.

Cari

And what do you say to people who have an audacious goal? right.

Something that they shouldn't even dare to have? What do you say to them?

Chris

Well, audacious goals are great. I mean, you should absolutely have those goals. The the challenge with the audacious goals. You know, we've all met the person right out of graduate school is like, I'm going to be CEO tomorrow. And, you know, having audacious goals is great.

But you you the only risk is you want to be careful that that audacious goal and the fixation on that goal. Well, maybe there are two risks. One, it doesn't lead you to do things that you're going to regret because a lot of people have these big, audacious goals are so fixated on getting them, they'll they'll do whatever it takes to get them. And now you'll always want to be careful of. Don't ever lose sight of how you get to an endpoint is as important as actually getting to the endpoint. So that's number one. And then the second thing is don't be so fixated on the linear path from point A to point B that you lose sight of those things that you didn't think we're going to come your way.

That might be really cool. Opportunities. I've told the story 100 times at BMS. I, I wanted to be an academic when I went to graduate school, I was going to go teach in a business school. This wasn't even in the game plan. I'd taken one biology course. The thought that I would ever be CEO of a company like this wasn't on the radar, but I realized that I wasn't going to be a great academic.

When I got my first job, I realized I loved being around people and actually doing work in this industry, and then all the opportunities that came along thereafter treaded path I hadn't envisioned. And I think being open to that. While you have your audacious goal, I think that's important.

Cari

Have a plan and be willing to veer off it when something sounds right.

Chris

Okay, my turn before we get into a cross-examination here, let's get things up. Because you're a better lawyer than I am, so, no right or wrong answers here, but we're gonna do a little bit of a lightning round kind of thing here. So you ready? All right. From someone who knows the menu. Well, what's the best dish at the Cheesecake Factory?

Cari

Is a tie between the avocado egg rolls and the tiramisu cheesecake.

Chris

The tiramisu cheesecake I've had, and it's fantastic.

Cari

It's amazing.

Chris

What's your favorite way to recharge and disconnect?

Cari

It depends. So. But overall, it is always a good time with the playground. I was with my four year old at the playground this weekend, and I went down the plastic slides, and other than sticking to it a little bit, it was phenomenal.

A good run. 50% of the time. That's great. 50% of time it's not. You never know. But it's always good to have a clear head. Yoga and ice cream.

Chris

Excellent. All good things. Particularly ice cream. What's something that stuck with you? It can be a book. It can be a movie quote, a meme, whatever? You name it.

Cari

Since you said book, my favorite book of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird. To the point where one of my children is named, her middle name is Harper. I married someone named Lee. I don't think it's related. And just because it really is about always doing the right thing, even when it's hard and the not popular thing. And I just love that book, so it always sticks with me.

Chris

Thank you. Cari. Thank you for being with us today again. You're you've got an incredible story and I certainly look forward to continuing to learn with you and from you so and for everyone until the next conversation, keep on transforming and we'll see you next time.