Transcript
Speaker: Greetings scholars and welcome to Following the Gong, a podcast of the Shrier Honors College at Penn State.
Speaker: Following the GON takes you in side conversations with our Scholar alumni to hear their story so you can gain career and life advice and expand your professional network.
Speaker: You can hear the true breadth of how Scholar alumni have gone on to shape the world after they ran the GON and graduated with honors and learn from their experiences so you can use their insights in your own journey.
Speaker: This show is proudly sponsored by the Scholar Alumni Society, a constituent group of the Penn State Alumni Association.
Speaker: I'm your host, Sean Doheen, class of 2011 and college staff member.
Speaker: If this is your first time joining us, welcome.
Speaker: If you're a regular listener, welcome back.
Speaker: Reggie Hedgibeth, class of 1989, joins the show to discuss his career in corporate legal leadership.
Speaker: Reggie graduated from the College of the Liberal Arts with honors in economics in 1989 and went on to earn his JD at Harvard Law.
Speaker: He shares his career journey where he has served in senior C-suite level roles for large organizations in a variety of industries from retail to energy to finance with vast responsibilities beyond the legal departments including HR and supply chain management.
Speaker: Reggie, a 2020 Penn State alumni fellow, provides his insight as not only a legal officer, but as a corporate leader who has experienced the highs and lows of serving in these roles across the country.
Speaker: This episode will be helpful for any scholar, and especially those seeking careers in law or business.
Speaker: You can read a more robust bio of Reggie and a more detailed breakdown of the topics we cover in the show notes on your podcast app.
Speaker: And with that, let's get right into our conversation with Reggie following the gong.
Speaker: Joining us here today is 2020 Penn State alumni fellow Reggie Hedgebeth.
Speaker: Reggie, thanks for joining us all the way from Los Angeles today.
Speaker: As always here on Following the Gone, I want to start at the very beginning and ask what brought you to Penn State out of high school?
Speaker: And of course, what was then the University Scholars Program?
Speaker: Well, hello, Sean, and thanks for inviting me to join you today.
Speaker: So great question.
Speaker: So what inspired me to attend Penn State was actually it was random.
Speaker: I attended a college fair with a friend, one of the community colleges in New Jersey, Ocean County College.
Speaker: And there was a Penn State representative there who basically waived the application.
Speaker: and said, you should apply.
Speaker: I applied.
Speaker: I was lucky enough to be accepted.
Speaker: And I actually attended Penn State sight unseen.
Speaker: Hadn't visited and attended, which was a very interesting experience.
Speaker: So what was your first impression when you got to University Park as a new student?
Speaker: Well, you know, once we made the five-hour trek into Happy Valley, which was a little bit of a surprise for this New York, New Jersey guy, I was really impressed with just the campus and the number of students who were moving in that day and the size and just the beauty of the area.
Speaker: And, you know, did not regret it at all.
Speaker: And then once you got here, how...
Speaker: Did you come to be in the, what was then the University Scholars Program?
Speaker: What was that process like for you?
Speaker: I actually started as a university scholar as a junior.
Speaker: So I spent the first two years trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do, what I wanted to major in.
Speaker: Settled in the economics program in the liberal arts college at that time.
Speaker: And I had a great relationship with a professor, Dr. David Shapiro, who as a sophomore encouraged me to apply to the university scholarship program.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I was able to join the program as a junior.
Speaker: And it was just a wonderful experience, very different than mine.
Speaker: what I had experienced as a traditional economics major with the smaller classes, the focus program, and the thesis, which was a bit of a challenge for me having never done that, but really a great support network that helped me kind of get through that process.
Speaker: I do want to ask about your thesis in a moment, but if we can take a step back, how did you come to pick economics as your major?
Speaker: You know, I started out as a communications major.
Speaker: I was thinking about a career in either some sort of public relations or media relations.
Speaker: role and took the first year micro and macro economics courses and actually enjoyed them and did very well and decided I wanted to move into a career in business.
Speaker: And by the time I had figured out that's what I wanted to do, I was pretty far down the road in liberal arts.
Speaker: And so I said, well, what's the closest program to business in the liberal arts school that would not require me to have
Speaker: to take additional credits or stay longer than the four years.
Speaker: And economics was close enough for me.
Speaker: And so that's what prompted me to do it.
Speaker: And it all worked out.
Speaker: I'd certainly say so, especially if you've read the show notes and seen a preview of what we'll talk about with your career.
Speaker: But I know you were involved in that department and you were also involved in some things on campus.
Speaker: Can you talk about what you did outside of the classroom and how that's helped your experiences in your career?
Speaker: Well, a couple of areas.
Speaker: So as a junior and senior at Penn State, I was a teaching assistant in the Department of Economics.
Speaker: And so it helped me to develop my teaching and advising skills with students at all levels in the economics department.
Speaker: And I had to hold office hours every week and respond to student questions and grade exams and quizzes, which I
Speaker: Gave me some interesting experiences that maybe we can talk about.
Speaker: And that was a lot of fun, but also pretty stressful because it was a lot of responsibility as a teaching assistant, in my opinion, because really those students are relying on you to help them.
Speaker: succeed in the classroom setting, help them understand concepts.
Speaker: It made me at least think about sort of, you know, how you learn, how you teach, how you focus, how you advise.
Speaker: And it's a very different way of thinking about things.
Speaker: And, you know, in my current role as chief legal officer and my previous roles in various aspects and various companies, you're always teaching, you're always developing.
Speaker: And some of those skills as a TA,
Speaker: I think helped me become a better manager, a better supervisor, a better leader.
Speaker: And the other activity that I was focused on was WPSU, which is the campus radio station.
Speaker: And I was a on-air talent and I was also a program director.
Speaker: And I just remember it's a student run, student staffed.
Speaker: It was at the time.
Speaker: And sometimes it was pretty hard to get some on-air talent to show up on time or show up regularly, even though everybody who was on-air talent, you
Speaker: We had passion for radio and music, but it was somewhat like herding cats.
Speaker: And everyone had different personalities and different interests and different pressures in their life.
Speaker: And so learning how to kind of manage a schedule, manage a team, motivate and incentivize people is a skill that I think my experience at WPSU really helped.
Speaker: Yeah, it sounds like you had some really good opportunities to put management and leadership skills that you use today even and start developing those right here on campus.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And, you know, at the time, you know, you're young and you don't really appreciate, you know, some of the skills that you're building at the time.
Speaker: But I tell you, I leverage quite a few of those experiences every day, even 30 plus years later.
Speaker: So if you're listening and you're involved in something on campus, you're a TA, an RA, you
Speaker: you're leading a club.
Speaker: Think about how these opportunities can apply to your resume and use them down the line just like Reggie has.
Speaker: Now, you did mention your thesis experience and on top of, you know, running the radio station and helping teach classes, you also had to contribute new knowledge to economics.
Speaker: Can you talk about how you picked your thesis experience and how you found that helpful in the next stages of your professional journey?
Speaker: You know, as I was thinking about this, I never expected
Speaker: I would ever go to law school or become a lawyer.
Speaker: But my thesis topic was focused on the antitrust merger guidelines that were issued, promulgated by the Department of Justice.
Speaker: So for those of you who might understand mergers and acquisitions, the Department of Justice has these merger guidelines.
Speaker: And if a company is acquiring another company,
Speaker: And there's a belief that the concentration of market share that that company has would be too high.
Speaker: So it would basically control the market.
Speaker: The Department of Justice would use these factors in order to make a determination of whether to approve the merger or not.
Speaker: And so it's ironic that I ended up as a lawyer and my first role as an associate at the law firm was in the
Speaker: M&A department.
Speaker: But at the time, Penn State did not have a law school, did not have a law library.
Speaker: And I just remember spending a lot of time in the economics department and the business department trying to figure out how to gather the legal materials in order to be able to research and prepare my thesis.
Speaker: So, you know, years later, I ended up going to law school and taking corporation classes and transactional classes and actually doing deals as a young associate.
Speaker: So, you know, it's sort of
Speaker: interesting that I ended up going in that direction, not having any aspirations at the time when I was at Penn State to become a lawyer.
Speaker: So I want to ask that.
Speaker: So I've heard you tell your story before, but like you said, you didn't anticipate you were going to go to law school.
Speaker: So what prompted you to consider that as something?
Speaker: What was that next step?
Speaker: There's a joining link here between Penn State and going to law school.
Speaker: Can you talk about how that influenced that decision?
Speaker: Well, you know, my first role out of Penn State was as an analyst at General Electric in finance.
Speaker: And I thought I was going to work for GE for the rest of my career and work as either a finance or some accounting analyst or some role in financial planning and analysis.
Speaker: And it was a great program.
Speaker: I rotated around the company and
Speaker: around the country.
Speaker: A friend of mine was leaving the program at GE, attended the University of Chicago Law School.
Speaker: And I was thinking about, well, what was going to be the next stage of my career?
Speaker: And I was thinking about going to business school.
Speaker: And he said, well, why don't you consider law school?
Speaker: And at the time at GE, I was working with lawyers.
Speaker: I was on real estate lending at that time.
Speaker: I started talking to the folks inside GE and some of the lawyers that we're using externally and said, OK, well, it's interesting to me and let me apply.
Speaker: And I applied and had the great fortune to get into Harvard Law School.
Speaker: And the rest is history.
Speaker: So when you get to Harvard, obviously that's one of the top law schools, probably very aspirational for many and very well known.
Speaker: What advice do you have for scholars to succeed if they are going to law school, especially at top programs like Harvard that they can use in their journeys?
Speaker: Great question, Sean.
Speaker: And, you know, I think there are a lot of things that come out of the honors program that, you know, translate well to any graduate program, but in particular,
Speaker: Law school.
Speaker: So having a real focus on reading and comprehension, the way that, at least my experience in the honors program, where you built relationships with your professors and the relationships initially for me were, you know, I don't understand a concept or I'd like to talk more about what we're reading in class.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in fact, some of the classmates I had who have gone on to do great things.
Speaker: The economics program at Penn State, where we had a seminar with about a dozen students, and we just spent the first year of the university scholars program just talking about economic concepts and debating them and learning from each other and
Speaker: having study groups and working together, the same holds true in law school.
Speaker: A lot of your success is not necessarily about what you can do individually, but what you can learn collectively because no one person knows every concept and you leverage the knowledge of your study group and sometimes your entire class depending on the course.
Speaker: And so there are a lot of parallels between my experience in the honors program at Penn State and
Speaker: by time as a 1, 2, and 3L at Harvard Law School.
Speaker: And obviously, you went on to a career after being the 1, 2, 3Ls at Harvard.
Speaker: And initially, you went kind of the fairly, I'll call it traditional route for a lot of law students.
Speaker: You went directly to a law firm.
Speaker: And obviously, again, if you've read Reggie's bio in the show notes, you know we're not going to stay at this law firm for terribly long here.
Speaker: But I wanted to ask, what was that experience like?
Speaker: What did you take from it?
Speaker: And what prompted you to decide...
Speaker: a different path was for you.
Speaker: The traditional path out of Harvard and many of the law schools is to become an associate at a law firm or
Speaker: go into some role in government, something along those lines.
Speaker: And so I took the very traditional path, had three years of experience at King & Spalding in Atlanta, which is top law firm in Atlanta in my opinion.
Speaker: And I worked on a number of significant transactions, mergers, acquisitions, took companies public.
Speaker: On the security side, I did securities advising.
Speaker: And I felt like, you know, working at least at King & Spalding in the corporate function gave me a great foundation to do a number of things that have helped me throughout my career.
Speaker: And one thing that I decided to do pretty early on, and Sean, you alluded to it, is I didn't stay at King & Spalding particularly long.
Speaker: I was there for about three years.
Speaker: And then I really missed being on the corporate side, the business side, and went in-house as a corporate attorney to Home Depot and worked on everything related to the store experience other than the real estate and the employee side.
Speaker: So all the merchandising, all the logistics, all the environmental work, supply chain, procurement, all those contracts and contracts.
Speaker: legal issues came under my umbrella, which was a lot of fun, very exciting, a lot going on.
Speaker: But I leveraged the foundation of what I learned at the law firm to, you know, how do I draft a contract?
Speaker: How do I advise clients?
Speaker: How do I communicate effectively?
Speaker: How do I analyze legal issues and provide legal advice that could be helpful to my business clients?
Speaker: So I
Speaker: aspects and experiences out of the law firm really helped me, I think, become a really solid in-house legal advisor.
Speaker: Yeah, you've had an interesting run there.
Speaker: So you move over to Home Depot and essentially you've gone through a series of different companies and you've had titles like VP of Legal, Chief Legal Officer, something to that effect at these different roles.
Speaker: So I was wondering if you could just kind of walk us through place by place,
Speaker: what you did at each, the challenges that you had and what it was like adapting from one industry to the next.
Speaker: Because I think that's kind of a unique story where you've gone from retail to energy and finance and all these, what you think of as different industries, but you've been able to take your talents and expertise in business and leverage them in each.
Speaker: So I was just wondering if you can take us through the ups and the downs of each one of these and what you learned that you can share with scholars along the way from each of those stops.
Speaker: So we'll start at Home Depot, work up to your current role at Capital Group.
Speaker: At Home Depot, I spent about eight years.
Speaker: I was lawyer number 14 and again, was responsible for the operational and merchandising and IT side of the business from a legal standpoint.
Speaker: I helped the general counsel who I reported to at the time.
Speaker: grow the team and implement processes to manage all of our commercial agreements, to manage the way we administer contracts and the like.
Speaker: And then after my time at Home Depot, I had the opportunity to take on my first chief legal officer role at a company you might remember called the Circuit City.
Speaker: Consumer electronics and moving from home improvement to consumer electronics.
Speaker: I was there for about four and a half years.
Speaker: For the scholars listening, you may not remember that one, but it was kind of like Best Buy.
Speaker: I think they were kind of, they were competitors in that space.
Speaker: So if you've ever seen the stores with the big red box out kind of over the doors, you can always go on Wikipedia and look it up.
Speaker: Thanks for that, Sean.
Speaker: Appreciate that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Circuit City actually started the consumer electronics big box sector and for a variety of reasons ended up in bankruptcy and
Speaker: 2008 and liquidated in 2009.
Speaker: But it was my first chief legal officer role.
Speaker: And as you can imagine, when you're dealing with a company that's going through some competitive and business challenges, it could be high anxiety, high stress.
Speaker: But from a legal perspective, it was an unbelievable learning experience because you're involved in basically every aspect of the business, trying to keep it out of bankruptcy and do whatever you can to try
Speaker: to protect the company.
Speaker: And for a variety of reasons, it didn't happen.
Speaker: And that's what prompted my move from retail to oil and gas and energy.
Speaker: So I moved from Virginia, where Circuit City was based, to Houston, Texas, where I spent about 12 years
Speaker: with two different companies.
Speaker: First, moving from retail to a company called Spectra Energy, which was a highly regulated gas pipeline and gas processing company.
Speaker: So radically different sector.
Speaker: But some of the experiences I had in retail, whether Circuit City or Home Depot, really helped me, I think, succeed in that company where you had a company that was going through significant growth, transition.
Speaker: We were building gas infrastructure around kind
Speaker: tree.
Speaker: A lot of leadership skills that I had described at either at Penn State or those other companies, I think really helped me thrive at Spectra Energy.
Speaker: I was there for about seven years.
Speaker: We ended up selling the company.
Speaker: When that happened, I decided to leave and ended up in a different sector of energy with a company called Marathon Oil.
Speaker: And Marathon Oil is primarily focused on drilling.
Speaker: So exploration and production of oil in shale plays, which you might have heard about in West
Speaker: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota.
Speaker: We had oil rigs in the North Sea in the UK and also had gas processing in West Africa.
Speaker: So just radically different than what I was doing on the pipeline infrastructure side.
Speaker: And there at Marathon Oil, in addition to running
Speaker: the legal department.
Speaker: I was chief administrative officer.
Speaker: So I had human resources, communications, facilities, we're building a new headquarters, government affairs.
Speaker: So a much broader umbrella of responsibilities.
Speaker: And having had some of the experiences I had in my previous stops allowed me to be able to manage areas outside of the traditional legal department of what you would think of
Speaker: general counsel should be responsible for.
Speaker: And most of it was, how do you manage people?
Speaker: You may not necessarily be an expert in the areas that they are dealing with day to day, but generally the concepts are the same.
Speaker: And it's about making sure you have the best people in the right blocks and making sure they have the support they need in order to thrive and do what they need to do in a day.
Speaker: And so I think the CEOs that I've worked for have had confidence in my ability to lead outside the legal department.
Speaker: I think it's made my experiences much more interesting and diverse and it's given me the ability to manage all sorts of areas and different sectors.
Speaker: And finally, I left oil and gas and made the move to the West Coast with Capital Group, which is investment and asset management.
Speaker: So again, another radical sector shift from retail to energy and now financial services investment management.
Speaker: And a lot of the concepts that I've been describing in just leading a team, leading a group of subject matter experts, translates from sector to sector.
Speaker: Now, you need to understand the
Speaker: you know, sort of day to day, what the business does from a legal standpoint, what regulatory issues, what legal issues are critical for the success of the business.
Speaker: So Reggie, I really like how you talked about kind of the part that translates across and that's the people and the teams.
Speaker: And I do want to dive into that in a minute, but you've worked in retail.
Speaker: You've worked in energy and different parts of energy, finance and capital management.
Speaker: How do you go about training yourself on these different industries?
Speaker: You were an economics major and you've overseen IT, you said, supply chain, human resources.
Speaker: These are all different disciplines that you can be subject matter expert on, as you said, in very niche down to specific areas.
Speaker: So how do you find the balance of knowing enough
Speaker: but also trusting to the experts that you are leading?
Speaker: Great question.
Speaker: And, you know, it's one of these things where you just have to, especially when you're leading large organizations with a significant number of people, you need to,
Speaker: really focus on, at least in my opinion, identifying the best talent and learning how, when you bring in that talent to support those areas, giving them the ability to be successful.
Speaker: So when I managed supply chain at Spectra Energy, I hired, in my opinion, one of the top chief procurement professionals, brought him into the organization.
Speaker: jointly developed a strategy.
Speaker: And my job as his supervisor was to make sure that he had the ability to grow, to implement the strategy, to execute the strategy, and for me to try to minimize any barriers or restrictions so he could manage the team.
Speaker: It was the same for HR at Marathon, a wonderful head of
Speaker: human resources.
Speaker: I spent a lot of time with her and we were going through some challenges as a company.
Speaker: And my job was to provide advice and counsel, but let her manage the function.
Speaker: And to the extent I needed to break down barriers, make sure she had the resources in order to execute on
Speaker: First strategy, do the same.
Speaker: Capital group, different industry, highly regulated.
Speaker: So what I do is I spend a lot of time with the team I inherited asking questions.
Speaker: What keeps you up at night?
Speaker: What are some of the issues we need to think about as a legal department and a firm?
Speaker: What's our strategic plan for the midterm and the longterm?
Speaker: What are some of our challenges?
Speaker: How are we planning to grow?
Speaker: In addition to all that, I call it my orientation program.
Speaker: So my world tour.
Speaker: So I spend an inordinate amount of time meeting with people inside and outside of the department, just so I get a feel for the team generally, but also the business, what works, what doesn't work, how I can help, what I can learn from, get out to the field and get in the front lines and really understand
Speaker: how the business is run outside of our headquarters location.
Speaker: And it's all about learning, all about learning.
Speaker: And then folks get comfortable with me.
Speaker: I get comfortable with them, understand the business.
Speaker: And the plan is to become a better legal advisor because I understand the business, just not the legal and regulatory world.
Speaker: That is a great answer, Reggie.
Speaker: Thank you for that.
Speaker: Now, I would say you've rocketed up the career ladder.
Speaker: Is that fair to say?
Speaker: Well, maybe.
Speaker: I don't know if that's fair.
Speaker: You're a pretty modest, modest gentleman, but I think it's fair to say that, you know, some folks might hope to be in this role at one company, and you've spent most of your career in these roles so well.
Speaker: What is it like being the one seeking a job versus, I imagine there might be some headhunters, some recruitment professionals involved in your journey.
Speaker: How do you navigate that space when you're looking for a change?
Speaker: Great question, Sean.
Speaker: And one thing I've always focused on, and early on, I didn't really appreciate that I was doing this, but I mentioned early on building connections with your professors and your peers.
Speaker: And what I was doing was networking.
Speaker: And you never quite know when you might need to leverage these relationships.
Speaker: But when I decided to go to law school, I needed recommendations.
Speaker: So who was I going to get to write these recommendations?
Speaker: Professors, my old bosses, folks I had interacted with throughout my Penn State career and my early corporate career.
Speaker: And so just continue to do that.
Speaker: And you build these networks and you build these networks.
Speaker: And I always say you never quite know who you are interacting with and what they are going to be and how they're going to help you and how you can help them.
Speaker: So it's always so important to get out of your office or get out of your virtual world if you're in a virtual office on Zoom and just connect with people on a more personal basis and get
Speaker: get to know them, get to know what they're doing.
Speaker: And that's really, really helped me.
Speaker: And I would say when you do that, then interestingly, it's funny, particularly in the corporate world, there are a lot of people who kind of know each other and your reputation starts to grow.
Speaker: And someone will say, well, I work with Reggie at this nonprofit and he would be a great addition to your corporate team or to your board of directors.
Speaker: And that's one way to do it.
Speaker: And also, you mentioned recruiters and headhunters.
Speaker: You get on their radar screen.
Speaker: And one thing I always did, even when I was a junior corporate counsel at Home Depot, I would get headhunter calls and they would say, well, would you like to come to this company?
Speaker: I had this opportunity you might be interested in.
Speaker: And maybe I was and maybe I wasn't interested, but I would always take the call.
Speaker: I would always chat with them.
Speaker: I was always interested.
Speaker: let them know sort of who I was and said, well, I'm not interested, but maybe sometime down the road.
Speaker: On a handful of occasions, that was very true.
Speaker: And I ended up going on interviews and considering opportunities.
Speaker: And frankly, some of the recruiters and some of the folks that I've worked with 20 plus years ago, I still connect with today regularly.
Speaker: So always leverage those networks, always build those relationships.
Speaker: And, you know, it will benefit you.
Speaker: And, you know, you can, depending on what you're doing and what role you are, you might be able to help someone who needs help.
Speaker: And you mentioned relationships.
Speaker: Can you talk about how a chief legal officer interacts with the other folks who are in the C-suite, as they call it?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So generally in the Fortune 500 or the public company corporate world, you have the C-suite, which is made up of chief executive officer, chief financial officer.
Speaker: They might be a chief operating officer, chief HR officer, chief information officer.
Speaker: And generally it's rounded out with the chief legal officer.
Speaker: And so at that level, you're part of the executive team and your role is to, as a group, basically run the business, execute the strategy, develop the strategy and make sure that you have the talent to do that.
Speaker: So it's a legal role from my perspective.
Speaker: And so you're there to provide sort of the legal boundaries.
Speaker: But when you're in a C-suite, you're focused on really helping drive the business.
Speaker: So it's a business, more of a business role than a legal role, depending on what the topic is or what the issues are with that.
Speaker: particular company.
Speaker: And so, as I mentioned, going down the list of all the members of the C-suite, each of the C's have their role and their responsibilities.
Speaker: But in the companies I've worked for, you just have to be willing to inject your opinion or your experiences on areas outside of your umbrella.
Speaker: The CFO would say there's something related to financing or liquidity.
Speaker: I would, you know, might interject or provide my opinion on sort of what we need to do or what we shouldn't do.
Speaker: Or an HR issue would come up.
Speaker: It's my role to, if I have an opinion about how things should go, just make sure that, you know, my opinion is stated.
Speaker: So, you know, it's beyond sort of just what you do.
Speaker: It's being basically running a business, which is, I think some people don't
Speaker: really understand, particularly earlier in the careers where you just really focused on sort of your business as usual, your day to day.
Speaker: But the higher you move up an org structure, an org chart, the broader your responsibilities become, the expectation that you are going to be involved in more than
Speaker: exactly what you're doing will increase.
Speaker: So it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's stressful.
Speaker: You have a lot of responsibilities.
Speaker: I work very hard, but I've enjoyed being part of leadership teams throughout my career.
Speaker: I think it's safe to say you kind of got that MBA anyway.
Speaker: That's probably right.
Speaker: Now, something you mentioned during the networking answer that you gave a moment ago, that is that you serve on both nonprofits and I'm gonna talk about those in a minute.
Speaker: But first, let's talk about serving on the board of for profit ventures.
Speaker: You've sat on some of these, you sit on these for us, other folks, what exactly does that mean?
Speaker: And what do you do in roles?
Speaker: And how do you avoid conflict of interest with your day job?
Speaker: Great question.
Speaker: So I've had the opportunity to, as a general counsel, I support a board of directors for the public companies I've worked for.
Speaker: And I also had the opportunity to sit on the board of Brinks.
Speaker: And you might know Brinks from the armored car industry.
Speaker: that you see running around in front of banks and retail establishments.
Speaker: And it's a wonderful company that operates in 100 countries and 70,000 employees has served on the board of directors.
Speaker: And as a board member, your responsibility is to help develop the strategy for the company, working with the management team, could be the CEO and the CFO, and also make sure you have the appropriate executive team.
Speaker: Do you have the right CEO who can help drive the strategy and grow the business?
Speaker: Do you have the right CFO who can make sure that from a financial and liquidity standpoint,
Speaker: as the tools to be able to grow and the other members of the executive team.
Speaker: In my opinion, those are really the two major responsibilities, most significant responsibilities of public company board of directors.
Speaker: There are a lot of other things that are required.
Speaker: I was also chair of the audit committee.
Speaker: So making sure from our disclosure standpoint, from a
Speaker: Securities and Exchange Commission, all of our quarterly earnings guidance, all of our earnings disclosures and reports, making sure we had the right external auditor, making sure we had the right internal control so our accounting was accurate and the like.
Speaker: So there was a lot that
Speaker: goes into it, but primarily I think it's the making sure you have the right leadership team in place and making sure a company has the right growth strategy.
Speaker: And it sounds pretty straightforward, but when you're in the middle of it, there's a lot that happens.
Speaker: And so it's a huge responsibility.
Speaker: And I was glad to be part of my 10-year experience with Brinks.
Speaker: And something you've mentioned a few times, if you've been able to track through your head listening, you started in New Jersey, came to Happy Valley, went to Massachusetts, then you went to Atlanta, then Houston, and now you're in Los Angeles.
Speaker: So you've moved quite a few times, all in the, you know, being able to take these great opportunities, but you have a family.
Speaker: So how did you approach the high demands?
Speaker: And you particularly noted the stress at Circuit City.
Speaker: So how did you approach those conversations with your family about uplifting and moving to a new opportunity in a new state?
Speaker: Some of it was just having really open, transparent conversations about the opportunities that would be available, taking on those roles.
Speaker: Trying to understand the impact on, I have four daughters, and moving kids in middle and high school is pretty challenging.
Speaker: So trying to put the right foundation in place, trying to think about, you know, the right schools and making sure there was a transition plan.
Speaker: And then once, you know,
Speaker: We had moved to sort of the new city, making sure they just had the right level of support.
Speaker: And so it's challenging, I have to say, when you're in a corporate role, particularly in the more senior roles, you find that you tend to, if you're going to leave a company, more likely than not, you're going to have to leave the city you're in because you have to move to the headquarters location.
Speaker: And it's a challenge.
Speaker: It's stressful on the family.
Speaker: And sometimes balance is hard, particularly in times like we're in pretty challenging times right now with the economy is a bit chaotic and all sorts of stressors and strains globally.
Speaker: And so just trying to provide that balance.
Speaker: I'm not sure if I was particularly successful in doing that, but at the time I had, my wife was spending more time with the kids and
Speaker: dealing with the day-to-day than I was.
Speaker: And then early in our careers, we were both working, so we had to try to balance it.
Speaker: And I'm not sure if we balanced it, but the girls are adults and doing well.
Speaker: That's all you can hope for.
Speaker: And in addition to family,
Speaker: Great question.
Speaker: I'm a big believer in giving back.
Speaker: And so I've had a number of mentors, mentors,
Speaker: throughout my career who decided that they would spend some time with me, help sponsor me in new roles or provide advice and guidance on my career and give me opportunities.
Speaker: And so I really feel blessed that they were willing to do that.
Speaker: And so I feel like it's my responsibility to do that with others, whether it's students at Penn State, whether it's students I live in
Speaker: various cities I've lived.
Speaker: To the extent I can help some of the charities that I've been affiliated with from a governance standpoint and to the extent they needed a financial standpoint, I think it's important.
Speaker: In Houston in particular, I was involved in a couple of different nonprofits that were focused on live theater.
Speaker: Live theater is interesting.
Speaker: I enjoy Broadway.
Speaker: I enjoy musicals and the like, but
Speaker: Both of the charities also had a mission to supplement arts education in public schools, which was important to me because, as you may know, you know, a lot of the public school funding has shifted away from physical education, arts, education.
Speaker: and the like, and relying on outside entities to help supplement that.
Speaker: And so both of the charities in Houston, at least I was involved with, had a focus on school students, you know, elementary all the way up through high school.
Speaker: And that's important to me.
Speaker: So I'm going to stay involved with Shryer.
Speaker: So making the trek all the way from the West Coast to State College, which I found is a, can be a day long journey depending on the time of year.
Speaker: But yeah, so it's something I'm going to continue to do.
Speaker: And it's really important to me to be
Speaker: involved and to really pay it forward.
Speaker: And we honestly expect nothing less from our scholar alumni as part of our mission of civic engagement and leadership.
Speaker: Now, speaking of skills and opportunities for scholars, you know, you talked about kind of paying it forward in education.
Speaker: What are some skills that scholars could look to develop now if they are interested in a path even remotely similar to yours?
Speaker: I think, you know, if you're a scholar, you probably have a lot of these skills already.
Speaker: You're a learner.
Speaker: You're inquisitive.
Speaker: You ask a lot of questions.
Speaker: You can write well.
Speaker: You can communicate well.
Speaker: I think those are really sort of the basic skills you need to be successful in any career.
Speaker: I mean, whether it's on the corporate side, nonprofit, government, and if you decide to go to grad school,
Speaker: I think those skills will clearly help you.
Speaker: And we keep talking about this, but the relationship building skills.
Speaker: I mean, I can't emphasize enough how important that is, not just in the business world, but in the educational world.
Speaker: You know, there will be opportunities that will come about just because you interacted with somebody who just remembers who you are and says, well, maybe Reggie would be a great person for this opportunity.
Speaker: And I think sometimes, particularly when we're early in our career, we're
Speaker: we're very focused, rightly so, on, okay, I have this job.
Speaker: I'm going to do what I need to do.
Speaker: I'm given this task and we're going to get this done.
Speaker: And you have blinders on and you get it done well.
Speaker: And then you realize when you get your annual evaluation, your supervisor will say, well, you know, you've stayed in your office all day and you didn't really get to know the company or get to know your team.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: or do some things that were sort of outside of the box.
Speaker: And that's going to be really important.
Speaker: And what I appreciate about Schreier, even more so than when I was a university scholar, is Schreier really challenges all the students to do things differently and really stretch themselves and go overseas, work for students.
Speaker: companies and these research institutions that are going to do things a little bit differently.
Speaker: And the last, since I've been involved with Schreier, I've been so impressed with the quality of the students and the quality of the research and just sort of the poise and the way our students just sort of scholars really communicate and present themselves.
Speaker: And you've
Speaker: may not appreciate it, but you have a leg up on maybe some of your peers who haven't had the destroyer experience, who may not be as comfortable sort of in front of audiences or presenting themselves and presenting their research, because that's a skill that to have early on is just so important and will just set you up for great success.
Speaker: I could not agree anymore with that, Reggie.
Speaker: Now, I want to round into our last chunk of our conversation today.
Speaker: So this is kind of our standard reflection questions that I ask of everybody.
Speaker: So let's start off with what would you say is your biggest success to date?
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: I would say from a corporate perspective, I mentioned that Spectra is
Speaker: I was given the challenge to manage our global supply chain operations.
Speaker: And as a lawyer, you don't normally see procurement under the umbrella, but the CEO, my boss at the time, had confidence in me and we had some challenges in that area.
Speaker: And he said, I have the confidence that you can fix it.
Speaker: about four or five years, I would say we were able to build a best-in-class global supply chain operation.
Speaker: We, the collective we, was me, our chief procurement officer, our entire procurement team of about 350.
Speaker: And we were building infrastructure all around the country, U.S. and Canada.
Speaker: It took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of sacrifice, but
Speaker: I feel really proud that we left that group and that company in a much better place than when we started.
Speaker: I think about that a lot and I talk about it all the time.
Speaker: And I think that probably from a business standpoint, one of my greatest successes.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: And you're definitely ahead of the curve on a lot of supply chain has dominated the headlines here in the past few years.
Speaker: So kudos to you.
Speaker: On the flip side, though, Reggie, what would you say is your biggest transformational learning moment you've had in your career and what you took out of that experience?
Speaker: So I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but the four and a half years I spent at Circuit City, challenging years, the company was dealing with competitive issues with Best Buy, with Amazon, with Walmart.
Speaker: We had opportunities in people and technology and real estate and our supplier relations.
Speaker: And unfortunately, it didn't come out the way I think the leadership team would have liked and affected tens of thousands of employees.
Speaker: But
Speaker: It was an interesting learning experience for me and where I interacted with peers who just really knew how to manage through crisis.
Speaker: And I really learned a lot from them on how to deal with uncertain situations and what to do and what not to do, which is critically important, even what not to do.
Speaker: when you're dealing with chaos in a lot of ways.
Speaker: And this was right around the Great Recession in 08.
Speaker: So a lot was going on back then.
Speaker: Some people are thinking about, are there parallels to what's happening now in the economy?
Speaker: Not so sure, but could be.
Speaker: Or you never want a situation to end where the company is no longer there.
Speaker: But I would say one lesson I learned from that is
Speaker: Don't shy away from challenging situations because you'd be surprised how much you're going to be able to learn from dealing with those challenges.
Speaker: And you stretch yourself as a person, as a leader, and you probably surprise yourself as well because you just sort of grow that muscle of how to, you know, respond to challenges and how to
Speaker: Basically, learned to lead people in a different way.
Speaker: Interesting time.
Speaker: I'm not sure I would want to go through it again.
Speaker: It was probably one of the most pivotal experiences of my career.
Speaker: You've mentioned relationships quite a few times.
Speaker: Are there any professors or friends from your days on campus that you wanted to give a quick shout out to?
Speaker: Yeah, so definitely Dr. Shapiro, who I believe is semi-retired in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has always been a great supporter of mine and all of my fellow university scholars in the economics programs.
Speaker: who are doing just wonderful things around the country.
Speaker: We graduated a long time ago in 1989, but I know we're all doing well.
Speaker: And there are a handful that I stay connected with periodically.
Speaker: Some of them are still in the state college area.
Speaker: I try to connect with them when I'm there.
Speaker: So hope everyone's doing well.
Speaker: Speaking of connecting, if a student wants to reach out to you and take this conversation further and learn from you, how can they get ahold of you?
Speaker: LinkedIn is the best way to reach me because my email address and my cell phone number might change.
Speaker: LinkedIn stays the same.
Speaker: So I'm under Reggie Hedgebeth.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: And are there any final pieces of advice that you want to leave for our scholars that just didn't come up organically in our conversation?
Speaker: No, this has been a great discussion, Sean.
Speaker: I think my advice would be
Speaker: Again, just ask questions.
Speaker: There's no such thing as a stupid question.
Speaker: That seems cliche.
Speaker: People say that all the time, but there really, really isn't.
Speaker: Because when you're in a group setting or a classroom, be surprised about how many people have the same stupid question and you're just brave enough to ask it.
Speaker: So and then people remember that.
Speaker: So, OK, maybe, you know, they were honest enough to know that they didn't know what was going on and had that question.
Speaker: So just ask questions.
Speaker: Well, Reggie, I might challenge your assumption here with my final question that I always ask.
Speaker: If you were a flavor of Berkey Creamery ice cream, which would you be?
Speaker: Not your favorite, but which would you be?
Speaker: And most importantly, as a scholar alum, why would you be that flavor?
Speaker: I'd probably be, I don't know if the creamery still has this flavor, but there was the sticky bun flavor.
Speaker: I think that's a permanent one.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's a permanent one.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So for me, because I'm always into being as productive as
Speaker: as I can.
Speaker: So if I can't go to the diner, I can't go to the creamer, I can go to one and get both experiences at the same time.
Speaker: And it saves me time.
Speaker: So it's about productivity and efficiency and managing your time.
Speaker: That is a great rationale for that one, Reggie.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Reggie Hedgibeth, Scholar alum, 2020 alumni fellow.
Speaker: Thank you so much for coming on Following the Gong today.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you, scholars, for listening and learning with us today.
Speaker: We hope you will take something with you that will contribute to how you shape the world.
Speaker: This show proudly supports the Schreier Honors College Emergency Fund, benefiting scholars experiencing unexpected financial hardship.
Speaker: You can make a difference at raise.psu.edu.
Speaker: forward slash Schreier.
Speaker: Please be sure to hit the relevant subscribe, like, or follow button on whichever platform you are engaging with us on today.
Speaker: You can follow the college on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on news, events, and deadlines.
Speaker: If you have questions about the show or a Scholar alum who'd like to join us as a guest here on Following the Gone, please connect with me at scholaralumni at psu.edu.
Speaker: Until next time, please stay well.
Speaker: And we are...
