June 27, 2022

Hi Gang,

What a trying time to be a CEO. When candidates tell me they have top-chair aspirations, I wonder if they’ve considered the challenge of addressing an organization the wake of such controversial, emotional circumstances. This is tough stuff. It’s probably no surprise to hear that “social skills” now trump experience sets in the CEO recruiting process. (*More on that below.)

What did we learn from the murder of George Floyd, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and diverging points of view on vaccination to advise us today? We no longer live in a country where these topics are too sensitive for the workplace. If you offer healthcare benefits to employees, you have decisions to make. If you have employees in Missouri, Texas or Ohio (among other states), you have decisions to make. And if you are in a leadership role, you have decisions to make about what to say and how to say it. That got me wondering… how are CEOs addressing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade?

Linked below are comments from a handful of CEOs in our industry. I’d love to know what you are hearing and how you are navigating this at work.

Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andme

Yvonne Greenstreet, CEO of Alynylam & Kelley Boucher, CHRO of Alnylam

Rami Elghandour, CEO of Arcellx

Paul Peter Tak, CEO of Candel

Gilead Statement

Ted Love, CEO of Global Blood Therapeutics

Paul Hastings, CEO of Nkarta

Bobby Azamian, CEO of Tarsus

Carolyne Witte, CEO of Tia

Be well,

Jackie

*As explained in this HBR piece, Choosing Your Next CEO: The C-Suite Skills That Matter Most, “When we refer to ‘social skills,’ we mean certain specific capabilities, including a high level of self-awareness, the ability to listen and communicate well, a facility for working with different types of people and groups, and what psychologists call ‘theory of mind’ – the capacity to infer how others are thinking and feeling.”