 All right. Hello all once again. Welcome to the Trail Blazers March Fireside Chat. For the newcomers, a quick introduction about the initiative. At the Digital Supply Chain Institute, the Trail Blazers vision is to advance and transform future of firm and leadership in supply chains. And through events like this, we aim to bring forward women leaders to share their success stories and experiences. For this session, we have Laura Besmeyer, Global Director, Assessors to Pay Operations from Corning. Laura, it is a pleasure to have you with us, and thank you very much for joining. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking. Thank you. Quick notes on housekeeping. Duration of the session is 30 minutes. We will have 20 minutes chat between me and Laura, followed by 10 minutes Q&A. We want the session to be interactive, so we will have activated the chat on Zoom. Please comment on anything you find interesting, and please feel free to type your questions. And without further ado, let's get started. Laura, can you give us a brief introduction about Corning, Corning GSM, and your current role? What do you love the most about it? Sure. So Corning, for those who may not know, you probably all have devices with some kind of Corning product in it. We are predominantly a material conversion company, meaning that most of our businesses take raw materials and convert it to a product that then goes into another product. So we make, in our display business, for example, we make the flat glass that's on monitors and on laptops and big glass displays that have touchscreen capability. We also make Gorilla Glass, which many of you will have on your phones, your devices that you speak on every day. Most likely have Gorilla Glass, or if you have one of the watches, that probably has Gorilla Glass on it as well. We also make a lot of life science products. We've been in the news a lot lately for pharmaceutical packaging as the virus vaccines go out. So we've been involved in that. And then we have catalytic converters that we make in the environmental sector, working on keeping your vehicles pollutant free or pollutant reduced. And so we have fiber optic cables, another thing that is very hot commodity right now, as we continue to move towards 5G networks and everybody has more demand on speed. So those are all the types of things that Corning does. We are a manufacturing company. Predominantly, we manufacture our own products. And we have a large research and development center that is very much the heart of how we create those new solutions that we then put out in the market, life changing solutions that we put out in the market. GSM is global supply management. That's what GSM stands for. The GSM organization reports into Cheryl Capps, who is the senior VP and chief supply chain officer for the corporation. She reports into a gentleman by the name of Eric Musser who happens to be our COO, Chief Operating Officer for the company. She is a female and I know we'll talk more about that as we go along. And she's very much a pioneer in the space, a forward thought leader. And we have about 600 people in our organization in GSM that our direct line into Cheryl. But we also have many more business embedded partners who do work for the global supply management organization that happened to be part of the businesses that we serve. That's awesome. So tell us more about your role. Like what do you love the most about it? I'm sure. Oh, you did ask me. What do I love about my role? I think what I love about my role, so I'm currently the director of source to pay operations and supply chain digitalization. In that role, I also have innovation. So I was actually recruited out of the innovation organization. I mentioned that our research and development center was really the heart and hub of the corporation. And I worked, I've been with corn in 25 years. And so my role prior to this role in global supply management was in innovation. And I think what I love about my role is that I was asked to come in and do transformation in this space. And Cheryl had a great vision. And so I've been allowed a lot of freedom to bring that transformation about as well as a lot of support. And so over the last six years, I've really had an impact and changed the space, changed how corning buys and pays for things in general. And so I love that about a job, right? When I can learn and then apply those learnings to make transition and change for the better. I just find that so much fun. It's awesome. It's here. You know, it's, it's amazing. I'm just curious about just one aspect you mentioned. You mentioned R&D to be the heart and hub of corning, right? You know, we've heard a lot of executives speak about how pandemic has affected the demand side or the supply side. I'm just curious to hear how the R&D has been affected by the pandemic. How those cycles have changed and how has it affected? Yeah, I think so for one thing, one year, though it seems very long to all of us who have been living through the pandemic, particularly in those areas that have been hard hit, right? Where we've been through lockdowns, et cetera. One year seems like a really long time. And sometimes our days probably feel really long. But in the research and development cycle, one year is a blip, right? Many of our products take multiple years to actually develop and progress. And as digital capabilities come into play, you start to leverage those capabilities to do faster cycling. Those models and such can continue to run, even in a virtual remote work space. So I wouldn't say that it slowed us down. It's allowed us to be creative in different ways. And what I hope is that we take those creative ways that we've learned over the past year to continue to move work forward. And we take that back in when we are all back in the office, all back in the labs. And we take those modeling and those capabilities that we've leveraged and we continue to apply them to continue to move faster. But one year is not a long time in our research and development cycles. Thanks for sharing that. I'm just going to speak a little bit about gender diversity in supply chain. You mentioned Sheryl Shaps, who's a woman, and she's the one who's leading the GSM. And supply chain has historically been a position fairly mostly by men. Do you believe that it's still the case or is it changing? And what advice do you have for organizations to address this gap and promote women's leaderships in supply chains? Yeah, so it's interesting is that that really hasn't been my specific experience. I know that when I go out and look at the data that it's true. But in the space in which I find myself working, my IT partner who has got a phenomenal supply chain had Dina Denton. I know that many of you as members have met her as well. She's a female, very dynamic forward thinker, as it pertains to supply chain. We've recently brought in a new IT supply chain focused individual that's helping us with the SAP S4 deployments and our transformation in that space in Corning as another female role. Several of our businesses have females in the roles of supply chain. I belong to Sheryl's organization. We're not 50-50 women, but we're pretty close in the higher roles within the organization. Now, when I came into the organization, Sheryl had only been here three years and we were still more men than women. But over the transition time, over the time that I've been in this role, I've seen a huge transition and I know it's a conscious decision. I also see many of my peers in other companies being female. I think females bring a particular skill set to supply chain that we inherently have the ability and it's a generalization and I do recognize that, but we inherently have the ability to juggle many balls. I mean, I think all through history, we've been raising our raising children and juggling agriculture or food gathering and food making, etc. We're always being asked to juggle many things. I think as we become more and more predominant in the workforce, we find that skill set of being able to juggle multiple things at once is really good in the supply chain space, because in the supply chain, you are thinking about all these different dots that are happening and how they connect and what that ecosystem looks like and being able to envision all these different pieces moving all in different paces, but all in parallel and being able to bring them together. I think that that is a skill set, an inherent skill set that our gender has a bit more strength then, so it doesn't surprise me to see women being very successful in the supply chain space and as more women are successful in the supply chain space, I think we'll see more women come into that space, but I've been very fortunate to work in a space where we have a lot of women already in the supply chain space. I think that's a perfect transition into our next question. More women being successful, that pulls more women to be leaders in supply chains, so let's talk about relations. I think having relationships with other supply chain women, whether it could be colleagues or mentors, is useful, maybe even critical to success. How did you go about developing these relations, especially outside of gardening? Yeah, that's a great question and I do think you have to be strategic about it. I think you have to think about it. It's about building out your network, because when you own an area in a company and nobody else in the company owns that same area, if you want to get ideas, you have to go to other companies that have people who do those type of jobs and get those ideas and share ideas and build on ideas together. That's how you bring better results back into your own organization, into your own company. There are definitely women organizations out there. I know a woman by the name of Beth Morgan has a supply chain organization out there called Boom. It's for women and advancing women in the supply chain space. There are, I know, other companies that are promoting women in technology and their roles and are helping them advance. SheDo is another company that we've had some conversations with in Corning, just talking about women in technology and how do you tap into those women and build out those networks. The thing is, though, and this is a controversial statement, the thing is, though, that if you really want to advance your supply chain career, you've got to build your network out with the men in the roles as well. Of course. Yes. It's really about building out your supply chain network. That includes technologies. What are the advancing technologies that touch in the space? You may not be using them, but you should be meeting with them. You should understand the thinkers in those companies, the ones that had the vision for creating that capability, the entrepreneurial spirit that's in that space. You want to tap into that. At the same time, you want to align to other big company, in our case, other companies that are like your own company and into roles that are similar to yours to see how they're doing it. There are several companies that are phenomenal at supply chain. Corning is a manufacturing company. We're still learning. We've got some pockets of excellence, but we're still learning from the Amazons of the world, from the Unilevers of the world. These companies that you see show up in top supply chain articles. It's great to read about them, to understand what their leaders are doing and thinking about, and then think about how that applies to you. Now, Corning is never going to be an Amazon. We're not a supply chain company. That's what Amazon is, but there are aspects of what Amazon does that we need to translate and bring back into Corning. Having capable network that ties to people who work in Amazon, who tie to people who are professors in universities, your network, from my perspective, this is Laura's opinion, needs to be very diverse. It needs to be global. It needs to be multi-company. It needs to be multi-generational, and it needs to be gender agnostic. You need to have both genders in your pool, in your network, and build those relationships, and you need to be ready to help as well as to ask for help. I couldn't agree more, Laura. I think it's very important, especially, you can be confined into your own sector. Just going out there and looking for examples or inspirations from other people, whether it could be supply chain or anything else, I think that's the key. Thanks for sharing that. And by the time you ask one of the big consultancies, the thought is already out there. Somebody's already doing it. So if you really want to get leading edge thinking in your space, you've got to reach beyond the big consultant companies. That's true. So let's talk a little bit about the projects and the transformation projects, especially you're in charge of at Gardening. In your opinion, what are the key ingredients for scaling and success of these transformation and digitalization projects that you own at Gardening JSM? Yeah, I think that if I had the perfect ingredients, I'd be thrilled. I'm still learning in this space as we transform. And actually, Digital Supply Chain Institute has been really a fantastic partner in this space, because with the Digital Supply Chain Institute, we've actually put together a scaling program a scaling playbook for our teams to use. And we've talked about everything from team size out to the actions that those teams need to work through in order to scale digital. We believe very much in an edge driven, centrally accelerated model in Corning, meaning that people are going to build out those proof of concepts in their space in different places all through the company. I mean, we're a very large company with 180 plus locations all over the world. And so you're going to have different pockets of capability from a digital perspective show up in different places. And what you want to do is you want those proof of concepts to be proven out, and then you want to bring them in and scale them. And so how do you do that? So we're still learning how to do that. And it's been great to have DSCI as a partner in that journey because I don't know that we would have gotten to the same level of playbook without that partnership. And so we are still in the process of finding the right project to use that playbook on, but I am sure that we're going to identify that in the next couple of months. And I look forward to seeing how that plays out. And we look forward to having you back again to share those stories. And just curious, I'm pretty sure, especially considering your role as focused on transformation, you deal with people resistant to change, right? You know, a lot of meteors or people who are a little resistant. So how do you deal with them? How do you teach your organization to change faster? Yeah, that's, that is a real challenge in pockets, mostly when you go across functions or businesses, because you can have a business leader that takes a certain position. And if their position is to move fast, their organization or their business will move fast, right? Because you have a top-down support and the resistance might show up, might be some passive aggressive resistance, but, you know, you have top-down support. And so you can work through that. Where I see the biggest challenge for us is when you have two business leaders across two different functions who need to work together in a transformation, and they have different ideas of what fast is. So when that is the case, you really have to, you have to break down, and this is where I think an innovation process can work well, if you break down and you iterate. So you go after small wins. You also have to think about it as a full field of things that you need to do, and if you can't move one item forward, go and do the other two or three that are over here that you might be able to progress, and then come back, because you will have learned things over here that you can apply to this space to help you convince them or bring change about. In a business, leaders are always focused on the profit line, right, the P&L, and rightly so. That's why they're in the roles they're in. One of the things that's difficult is transformation doesn't often generate ROI in a very short term. You need a longer term to do that. So what I found is that if you can break it into smaller pieces, and each of those in themselves can bring a return, that you can build that chain for them, for that leader to start drinking the Kool-Aid or buying into the idea, and then once you get them bought into the idea, then you get complete support again, and you can go back to moving that particular path that maybe we're stuck on while you were working on these over here. So I will say that it's a challenge, but it's a challenge. It's always been in business. It's just our definition of fast and speed has changed. So we have to go back and help everybody redefine. For sure. I think that's a perfect segue into our Q&A. We have a couple of questions, which already came in Laura, and there's a question from Mr. Swapnel Kelger, who says, how should companies, I think you touched upon it slightly, but I thought you could define it more for us. So how should companies define and measure the digital transformation maturity model before adding new tools and systems in their arsenal? Yeah, I think this is another thing that, given that innovation has been a bit of a hub for Corning, we've always had that dialogue across the innovation process for product and technology as to how do you measure success there? Because to the point when we were talking about the pandemic, one year in the research and development spaces, a small blip in the time that it actually takes to develop products and technical processes, right? And so when you think about the iterative process that you can apply in the space, again, breaking that down, then you can use more traditional metrics. But again, the Digital Supply Chain Institute, I think it was two years ago, now maybe three. One of the white papers was on the metrics that you need to be talking about with respect to digital transformations, because in a digital world you can't use the same measures that you've always used. And in a transformation world, you can't use the same metrics that you always use. So when do we get to the point where we're starting to say enabled revenue and how do we measure that? And then how do we take that transformation and tie it to that enablement of that revenue? And so I think every corporation and every business is going to have to work through their finance organization to educate them and think about these things in a different way. The white papers are a great start because it can be shared. And then you can facilitate some discussions with the finance organization around this thinking. And then again, you're going to have to find a couple of quick wins, put those quick wins into play, and then track them with your new metrics so that you can show how they can deliver. Because the proof is in the details, right? For sure. Yeah, and thank you for mentioning those white papers. So for those of you who are interested right after this chat, we will be able to send you a link via email to this white paper so that you can take a look. I keep digital supply chain institutes white papers at hand all the time because the topics are very prevalent and timely for the discussions in the educations. And I could do that education myself, but this brings a third party expertise, right, discussion so that they can get started on their education by reading through the white paper and then having a dialogue and discussion about how it pertains or impacts us in our business. And no, digital supply chain institute did not ask me to mention those white papers. They really are in my art school. I'm sure I didn't. Education. Thanks for the little thing that Laura. Okay, we have one more question from Diana Soto who says, what is the challenge you see and face the most when empowering young women in the supply chain industry? What are the challenges you see for them and how are you supporting them from a leadership perspective? Yeah, that's a great question, Diana. So I think the biggest challenge is that supply chain involves a broad spectrum of knowledge. And so when you're first starting out in your career, it can be hard to touch along all those different points of plan, source, make, deliver. And depending on the companies that you're working with, they can be looking for certain expertise in one of those areas over and above another. And what's important for one company is not always the most important part for another company. And so I think there's a number of ways of getting those experiences, though. You can get those experiences by having a role in that space. You can also get those experiences by having a project that breaches the space in which you need to develop yourself. And so I've often times in my career had a job that I had, but then also expanded out and did something beyond the role that I owned. Not full time, and you have to manage it because you always have to perform in the job that you're in. But in encouraging people to learn something about planning, for example, when I came into this role, I didn't know much about planning. So I volunteered to be on the round table for planning. Now I didn't have a lot of ideas at first, but I was willing to read and learn. And then I was able to provide ideas, but I learned from all the people that were on that team that were very experienced planners. So you don't always have the opportunity to have a job in the space, but you can often have the opportunity to get a project or access to or experience with one of the other areas in that supply chain so that you can get that broad end to end experience that is so important for being able to drive transformation in the space. Perfect. I think we have one quick minute to take one last question, Laura. So Eva Lamina says, the pandemic did not affect R&D for carding, but how impactful was it to carding supply chain and what contingency plans have been put in place to minimize the blow if there is any, if there is another crisis? Yeah, great question, Eva. And I think this has been, it's been a journey for Corning. We've got a number of digital tools that are helpful in managing the risk within our supply chains. So the pandemic impacted everybody, and Corning in particular, just like it did with most companies working through the pandemic from a supply chain perspective, everything from some companies shutting down temporarily, other companies, logistics has been really tremendously impacted. So anybody who's really close to logistics knows that this last year, and then with the SOA as canal, and the evergreen boat, that was kind of like the cherry on top of the Sunday, for the poor logistics people. But I think there are a number of indicators that can impact your supply chain, whether technology, business, financial viability of the businesses with which you're working, both customers and suppliers, that the digital tools that are out there now are helping us manage that. So we have tools in place to monitor those risks in our supply chain to notify us when there's a potential to those risks, and we're working towards in Corning to get to prescriptive where you actually get actionable actions that are shared with you that you can take based on the historical practices of the company and the viability of that supply chain channel. And so being able to get into modeling and tools that'll help run through multiple scenarios at one time based on the data that you have available to you and as more and more data becomes available, those scenarios will get better and better. I know we're not a predictive and prescriptive yet in Corning, but I know that there are some companies that are starting to get there, so I see the capability out there, and I'm excited to see Corning get to that point. So we're still managing, we're managing our supply chains better than we ever have, but we still have rooms for continuous improvement. Awesome. Thank you so much. And with that, I think we're at the top of the arm. That was quick. I wish we had more time, Laura, but thank you. Did it go fast? Yeah, that was fast. I was worried that we'd be trying to figure out what to talk to each other about, but our audience were nice. I also got three that I am happy to have, you know, if anybody has questions or anything that I can continue to answer, they're welcome to reach out directly to me and set up time or reach out through LinkedIn. I'm happy to continue to engage. Maybe we'll share your LinkedIn profile when we send out the feedback email, Laura. I think that would be great. Thank you so much. Thank you. So once again, I want to say thank you, Laura, for sharing your knowledge and experiences. I think it was inspiring and informative. And I'm sure our attendees are walking away with the same experience as well. Just to all our attendees, stay tuned. Not only we have great speakers like Laura lined up for you, but we are launching a four-month mentorship program called 21 for 21, where we will be accepting 21 high-caliber women who are seeking to advance their career in supply chains. Applications will be open on April 26. So stay tuned, stay tuned on our socials, and see you all next month. And thank you very much for joining. Thank you very much to go through. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.