 Hi everyone, my name is Jason Klein. I'm the director of P20 initiatives at Northern Illinois University. Part of my job is working with school districts and community colleges around the state of Illinois on supporting students and teachers with the career pathways. We're really excited that while we can't be out in businesses right now doing internships or job shadowing, we're providing work-based learning experiences to you at home through remote learning. Thanks to all of our awesome guests here on Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads. Today, I've got a great guest for you that should be exciting. We're going to talk about snack food, amongst other things. And so Bridget, I'm going to let you go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi everyone, I am Bridget Wolfe. I am the head of Snack Futures at Mondaliz International. And what that means is Mondaliz is a $26 billion snack company that we make things everything from Oreo and Trident to Cadbury and Milka. And I lead a team of innovators pushing incremental new small startups that we are creating our own brands as well as working with startups on the outside and investing in them. So first of all, we are all familiar with Mondaliz even though we may not know that we know Mondaliz because you guys make Oreos, for example. Second of all, your job, you're trying to create new snacks or work with other people who are creating snacks. Is that correct? Yes, we're making new brands and bundles for consumers that would be new and different to our portfolio of the snacks that we have, as well as we invest in startup snack brands and companies so we can help them grow for the long term. Cool. That is very interesting. So what is a typical like day or week look like for you in your job? It's, believe it or not, sometimes it is sitting in my home, despite what's going on now. Lots of conference calls, lots of working with our partners. Every day is actually a little bit different of how we're managing projects to our stakeholders, which could be senior management or suppliers or customers. It could be figuring out what designers and naming teams and what we want to do are with our engineers and our product developers or with chefs. Another part is when we get to go out and work with the consumers and get their reactions and see how they're working and then when we can sell them actually into the retail customers and get this stuff going on shelves. So it's a wild ride. I have a global position, so I travel around the world as well to be with my teams and with our partners. So every day is a little bit different. I wake up in the morning, check my iPhone and see what the calendar is to see what the plan is for the day. So this is episode three and in all three of our episodes thus far we've already talked about this idea of a job that's global in nature. Can you talk about where the people are in the world that you work with and what are the ways that you work with them remotely across the world traveling to them, etc. To give you a sense, we sell in 150 countries. We have plans all around the world, so from Australia and Peru and Russia. I have a small team, but within that we have people in New Jersey in the States. I have someone in Tel Aviv Israel, someone in London in the United Kingdom, a few folks in Zurich, Switzerland. We have team members in Shanghai, China, and then in Melbourne, Australia as well, and actually some folks in Germany. And that's my core team. We then have all of our functions that we can reach into that are basically in any part of the world that you might think of from Saudi Arabia to South Africa and beyond. So what are the skills that are really important in a job like yours that's different every day where you're doing everything from working with chefs to marketing people to engineers? What are what are those most important skills in your job? I would say critical thinking, being able to put things together to really be able to listen and ask the questions. And sometimes it's getting the best question is where you get to the best solution. It's not the answer. So as Einstein said, if you have an hour to plan, you want to spend 59 minutes on the question in a minute on the solution. So really strategic critical thinking is huge. Our listening skills, our teamwork and team building and collaboration is critical in what we do. Everything we do is a team sport, especially in innovation. And to the extent that you can have some fundamentals and if you're analytic, so know your numbers, understand the world around you, having some context of what's going on for both business and consumers' lives. So tell us tell us a little bit more about analytics and then I'm going to ask a follow up question to that. What does analytics mean in your world and in your work? It can be anything from a lot of numbers and the thing is every number has a story behind it. So the question is what are those patterns or stories? So from understanding the business, where are our sales? How much money were we making? Did we make money or lose money? What were those margins? So those type of analytics to how are things turning in the stores and what we call our velocities? So how quickly does it sell through and understanding what's going on there and what's driving those behaviors? So is it that we had an ad that drove it or we did a promotion in store and drove it? So sometimes just that built the blocks of the business for us in marketing is really important. Other times it's synthesizing data from consumers and you have lots of respondents come back to a survey and it's understanding how do you get all of those answers and feedback to make it a coherent story? We could say this is the insight and then this is the impact that we should have to drive the business going forward. Cool. So then when you're thinking about training, education, either for yourself and your position or if you are hiring someone onto your team, what kinds of education, what kinds of training does someone need to be successful in your work? So I'm going to say something that's going to sound awful to an educator, but I am formally trained in finance and then in marketing and strategy. So I have the checks, but I will tell you it's the ability to think and to connect that it doesn't always matter if you studied history or the arts or engineering if you're not going to be an engineer. I should say that if you need to know physics for certain professions. But in our case it's the ability to have an agility to learn. It's a work ethic that is really important that you're willing to put in the time to learn it and to shift. So I would say it's a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. Some of my best classes that I can now draw on today were education classes and managing people. They were the history of the symphony and what I learned. They were things in nature and how I can connect that that way. So actually there's a wonderful book called The Medici Effect that is all about in the Renaissance. The Medici family brought all these different types of people together in Italy to create innovation and think and combine and having that diversity of thought and experience is how you'll be able to connect dots better and faster than your competition or whoever it might be. Which goes back again to all of that critical thinking. So when you look at those team members that you talked about all over the world, how are their backgrounds different or similar than your background? It's great. Some of them are food scientists of their food developers. Some of them are engineers. So we know plants. Some of them are packaging engineers. Some are graphic designers. So the arts and the aesthetics. Some of them know substrates and by that I mean is it a plastic or a paper board or a film or something else? We have logistics people who can move mountains and materials. We have people in procurement who do contracts and the negotiations of what we buy and sell around the world for our raw ingredients. We have salespeople who are amazing communicators and people relationship with their sales and knowing the product. There is such an abundant range on what we do to get those Oreos out the door that there's really a world. And it's only, I would say, there's different technical things and it's more of a question of where your interest is and then having those fundamentals. Like I said, if you have some basics going in, you will get trained on the job and it's a willingness to learn and basically put in that work as well. So let's combine. I said I had a follow-up to the analytics question. Let's go back to that and I'm going to bring up that follow-up now and I'm glad I waited because there's some good context when I think about who you're making decisions with. When you go to make a decision, to what degree are you making a decision based on the numbers and to what degree are other factors contributing and what are those other factors? It's a terrific question. We often say, are you leading with your head and your heart? There are certain things that the numbers will tell you. Can you make money on this product or can you not? And if you can, then honestly, it doesn't really matter how brilliant it is. If there's no line of sight to profitability, you shouldn't be doing it. In other cases, it's a judgment call where we will say we think that X percent of the population would be interested in it, but we know from talking to people they're really excited. So there's anecdotal evidence that we're on to something and it's the art of decision-making. And we do it collectively. We bring in experts and having the right people around the table to make the decision. And then ultimately, someone has to be accountable and it might be me or it might be another team member and we will say, here's the decision. So based on all the information and what we know, we make a call. And sometimes we make the great call and sometimes it's not always perfect. And then the trick is, can we learn from what that was? Cool. That's awesome. And for the teachers who are watching this, that sounds a lot like our jobs where there is a numbers piece that can help us. But there's also this artistic piece that we need to bring together to be really, really effective. So I really appreciate you sharing that. So I touched on this briefly, but I'm going to ask a point blank. What education, what do people need to do after high school to get a job like your job? Ideally, you have a college education. I will say that it's becoming the ante. In our case, often it's even an MBA or some kind of secondary degree. It depends sometimes again in what function you're coming into. If you're a food developer, you're going to want the food science background or the engineering background to have those hard skills. And then as you go through the ranks of the organization, and this is what I was saying about the fundamentals. So in the beginning, I understood the math and the accounting and I could run Excel and I could read the reports and I could do the basic reporting and shareouts. But then as you go up in leadership, it's how do you motivate teams? How do you have a vision? How do you collaborate and make those decisions? So from an education, you could have a diversity, but from a pure degree, I would say getting a college degree would be lovely. That's awesome. That's great for us to know. So what is it that you love most about your job? It sounds so tripe, but I really love the team. I love making an impact in consumers world. I selfishly really love seeing my products on shelf. There's nothing better than walking the aisles and being like, that's our baby. It's fun harrowing the joy that people have experienced in or the surprise and the delight when we give them something new. So for me, I love the ability to learn every day. I'm in a different job the past 18 months than I've ever been in. I love leading my teams and getting the best out of them and uplifting them where I can. And then seeing where the impact were a big company. So in the world of health and sustainability, where we can start making a difference too. So can you walk us through a product that you guys took from its start, its inception to the store shelves? Yeah, I can give you a couple. So I'll start with gum because it's a really fun category for those in the States. It is called Trident Vibe. So if you are a gum chewer like me and you wanted a more sensorial, experiential product, this is for you. Every element of this product was designed for the senses from the bottle, which is clear that you can see the product to the name, which was about passing the vibes and having that good feels along the way with the insight that consumers need sometimes a little something to brighten the day. Gum isn't a cure all for everything, but it can be a little bright spot and a little pick me up and a great category that does that is gum or candy. So how do you take gum and the candy cues and semiotics and put that into gum. So we have colorful products, these cubes, which with fun kind of glitter around them. There is a sort of experience and the flavor on the outside coating of the gum. There is flavor crystal in the gum. Everything we did for Trident Vibe was designed to give a little bit of joy a little bit like the light in the day. We have on the other extreme on taking a baby brand that we created last year is a brand called Dirt Kitchen Snacks. So this is something that my team created for those looking for more savory, that salty better for you snack throughout the day where vegetables are really hard and frankly not so delicious. How can we make vegetables snackably delicious and that's what Dirt Kitchen is all about and putting that product out there and so that's in test market as well. That's very cool. So test marketing means it's not available everywhere right now. No, we had it on Amazon and then we were having it in LA so we'll bring it back online in the coming month. And then how do you, what happens from there? How does it go from a test market to in the supermarkets here in Chicagoland? Well, like everything you see, does it get traction? Do consumers like it? Are we getting back to those fundamentals? Are we having the velocity and the turn? Are consumers talking about it? Is there a badge value to say, oh, did you buy this and we can see the buys in social media? And then we'll have ultimately an easier selling for our customers and then we'll also have the scale up for our manufacturing. Cool. Cool. We're going to finish up with this question. What advice would you give students today thinking of a 12 year old, a 16 year old, a 20 year old who's kind of figuring out what they want to do career wise and what they need to do education wise to get there? What would be your advice to them? Start with your plan now, knowing it may change. That's the first thing is I always was good at math. I enjoyed business that inspired me. So I wanted to follow something that I enjoyed and it also played to my strength because well, it's always great to learn and improve. There's something really nice when it can all fit together and you can play to what you're starting with at least a leg up. And that might be in the law or in medicine or in the arts or wherever that might be and then figure out what classes or what education gets me that first foot in the door and have that experience. And then know over time it may evolve and that what we once thought this was going to be the job forever is going to change. So give yourself the openness to learn more throughout time and build those experiences that you may shift. It may still always have a red thread connected to where you started. But your end point might be very different and that's OK as long as you're learning and you can make a difference and you're having fun. It's all good. That's awesome advice. For those of you watching, we are still at the very, very beginning of this series and we've got big plans to bring you lots more people across a lot of occupations. If you have ideas of someone that you would like us to our professional occupation, you'd like us to explore. You can mention that to us on Twitter at P20 Network or if you have specific questions you want us to be asking all of our guests like Bridget. Again, let us know what those questions are on Twitter at P20 Network. Bridget, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing this. When I do get back out of the house, I'm going to stop and get some gum. Cool.