Hi, Jim McCann and today I'm joined by someone I deeply admire and I'm very lucky to call a friend, Sally Susman. Sally is the chief corporate affairs officer at Pfizer. She oversees global communications, policy, corporate responsibility, and more. And her career spans leadership roles at Estee Lauder, American Express, Capitol Hill, and she worked in the Clinton administration. Not only is she amazing and very accomplished, but she's a personal friend of mine. Over a glass of wine one time with Sally, I realized that I had known her father and her brother for years and somehow never connected the dots that the three of them were related. What a small world, right? Well, speaking of small world, today we talk about current events, the transition shaping our nation and the leadership mindset Sally brings to every challenge. It's a thoughtful, timely, and inspiring conversation, and I can't wait for you to all hear what she has to say. Sally is amazing.
Well, today I get to chat with a friend. Sally Susman has been a communications guru for a long, long time, for all of her 10 years of work experience or maybe a couple more. But Sally, it's great to see you. You've had a terrific career. You've just finishing up at Pfizer where you played a critical role. And no one in the professional communications world has been more under the microscope or in the spotlight or whatever is the appropriate term as you've been in the last five years, particularly through the COVID period at Pfizer. But before that, I know you've worked at the Estee Lauder companies and at American Express. As you think about your career, and I know you wrote a book in 2023 called Breaking Through. How difficult is it, as you think about this next chapter of your professional life with all the different things that you have going on? What does breaking through mean to you now that maybe it didn't mean when you started at the Estee Lauder Companies a few years ago?
You know, you always ask really, really good questions. That's what makes talking with you so fun. Breaking through at the time was of course about the work in COVID, trying to break through with a new mRNA technology, and then it expanded out to leaders that I've worked with that I thought really broke through and changed the paradigm. People like Ken Chenault, Leonard Lauder, and Albert Bourla. But now you ask a really interesting question. What does breaking through mean to me today? I think it means that even though today is my 64th birthday, I still have the capacity to grow and change and break through to new ways of working and being. Before I announced that I would be departing Pfizer at the end of the year, I announced it over the summer, I stressed about it a lot. I worried what would I say? What would people think? Would I feel like I was sort of falling into a hole? And it's been surprising and beautiful. I feel more like I'm sort of flying, and maybe flying without a net, but feeling very positive and optimistic about my future.
When you've worked with these giant personalities, what's your task? You're trying to get their character, their points of view, their philosophies out, but you want to do it in the context of what's appropriate for the businesses that they lead and what's comfortable and natural for them, so you're not asking them to stretch into something else. How do you shape what you do dependent on the personality, the industry, and the personality you're working with?
Great question. Many, many people ask me, including members of my family, what is it you exactly do? Because a job like mine, chief corporate affairs officer. You mean that brother of yours, Billy, would ask you a silly question like that? Billy probably knows better than most of my family members, but yes, he might ask me. And I've really seen my role develop into building bridges between these important companies and the publics that shape them. In today's corporate world, companies don't exist in an ivory tower or on a safe, sacred hill. They're in the middle of issues and challenges and scuffles. And so all the important constituents, whether that's elected officials, regulators, customers, patients, investors, it's my job. I think of myself as a bridge builder, which means not only communicating out from the company, but also trying to bring back insights, observations, relationships that help the people inside the company. So it's kind of a two-way street, and really at the center of it is the desire for authentic dialogue and authentic relationships. I had a really funny experience once where a senior executive called me into her office, closed the door, and said, 'Sally, I need you to hire a communications expert for me, a consultant.' I said, 'Well, okay. Why?' And she said, 'Because I need someone to make me authentic.' So that's something I can't do, but I can help people to develop skills, confidence, practice so that their authenticity can come through and people feel it. And it helps so much.
Now, having been the head of communications in large public companies, do you start out with a stakeholder map? You have your board, you have your internal leadership, you have your internal stakeholders, you have an investor community, you have in the case of Pfizer, you have the academic community, you have the scientific community, you have the regulatory community. Do you start out with each company with those different stakeholder maps in mind?
Well, we certainly draw out the stakeholder maps, but I'd like to start with what is my perceived outcome? What is the goal I hope to achieve? I think that the worst thing a communications or corporate affairs department in a company can do is be off agenda, to be off the point there. Departments like the one that I've led, they don't have an objective outside the objectives of the company, and sometimes they lose their way with something like that. So, for example, during the pandemic, I said to myself, our job is to build confidence in this vaccine, and then we build out the logical stakeholders from there. And I really like to almost start with an imaginary headline in a newspaper. What would I like that headline to say a year from now or two years from now?
And whether I learned that from you. We do that around here all the time.
Well, you must have somehow maybe I learned it from you. You do the same thing.
Start out with what do you want the story to be? What do you want people to write about what you've done this year?
Exactly. And then you back into it. Well, who's going to support that story? Who do you need to be a point of credibility or a proof point in that story and back into that? I think it's just a great way to work. Well, I learned so much from my time in Washington. My first job was on Capitol Hill for six years, and then I came to New York for a couple years and went back. As you said, I worked in President Clinton's administration. I actually worked directly for Ron Brown, who was the Secretary of Commerce at the time. And my job was to lobby on behalf of the administration up on the hill for their objectives, to get their nominees approved, to get their budgets passed, to get their ideas put into legislation. What a great place to be. The fellow there who's the CEO now is a good friend, Steve Squeri, and I think he's done a remarkable job at American Express. I think he just gets it, what they are, what they're good at, what they should be, and he doesn't get distracted. He's quite the guy.
I know Steve just a little bit, but I admire him a lot. And the company is a great company. It's really a great company. So, you must know my friend Melissa Moss. Doesn't everybody know Melissa Moss?
That's correct. London question. Not only do I know Melissa Moss, when I was coming back for Bill Clinton because I really wanted to get it going and we had a full Democratic House, I had to interview with Melissa Moss, who's a tough, tough cookie. She put me through the paces. I remember I was perspiring under her interrogation. And she hired me. We ended up working together at the Commerce Department for Ron. We are very, very good friends. When I had my book launch in 2023, she and her husband Jonathan and a couple other friends hosted the book party at Melissa's home. She's just a very dear friend.
All right, let's go there. When I first heard of the mRNA platform for the vaccine, I began to wonder, it seemed like a wonder drug or a wonder platform for drugs. Could we expect, Sally, that we'll hear a lot more about that in the future, that that particular delivery platform will be used for other things that we might go wow about?
I think there's a lot of wow ahead of us right now. Some of it is what you say, Jim. The possible other uses for mRNA technology. Things like oncology have been discussed. I'm always a little nervous that I don't want to get out over my skis with a scientific conversation, but I also know that oncology is one of Pfizer's big focus areas. We acquired Seagen last year, and yes, it's a wonderful oncology company from the west coast. We also have recently acquired Metsera, which is GLP-1, and the whole obesity phenomenon has been very exciting for the sector.
So, you're not a scientist but take some guesses. In the last couple of weeks, we're reading about the GLP-1 drugs having an impact. When we had breakfast together, a group of us recently, the conversation was about it retarding people's cravings for gambling, for alcohol consumption. What else might we, not as a scientist, but just as someone who's smart and curious, what else might we find out about them? There was a story this weekend, a terrific young woman who wrote in the Wall Street Journal about cancer in general and how we seem to have it on the run in so many different places. No silver bullet, but lots of different breakthroughs in different areas. And we've heard that GLP-1 drugs are perhaps effective on preventing diabetes, Alzheimer's, and certain coronary issues. And then hinted this week, some cancers seem to be at a lower frequency for people using GLP-1s.
Well, I haven't heard anything about the cancer connection. I've heard about impact on depression.
I hadn't heard about depression.
Yeah, it seems that it's a drug with a huge number of possible indications. And it's sort of like Lipitor. There's certain drugs that just have an overall high impact on your bodily health. And it appears that these GLP-1s are doing all kinds of things to reduce those cravings that we were talking about, alcohol cravings. But you're going to get me in big trouble with the lawyers if you persevere any further.
Well, I just wonder, GLP-1 drugs, I think about 20 million people now on one form or another in the US. Being someone who at the flowers companies, we make wine and Harry and David, our wine sales have held up, but in the wine industry, wine sales have taken a hit, and beer and alcohol as well. So I just wonder, it can't be uncorrelated.
I agree, and that's what we hear, but you can count on me to keep those wine sales robust for you. I'm fully committed.
Thank you. You're so helpful there. Tell me, welcome to a wonderland filled with tasty treats, gourmet goodies, and holiday cheer. Harry and David premium gifts were made to sweeten your time around the tree. And you might even have a little leftover for Santa. And yes, it's a transition for you, but I can see you're excited about living more of a portfolio life than being focused just on one industry, one business, one leadership team. I think you bring so much to the table that you're going to have a hard time disciplining yourself not to take on too much because you're going to be so highly sought after. I know you already are. But as we stay on the political theme, when we gathered with some friends for breakfast a couple of weeks ago, you indicated how much you were rooting for Mayor-elect Adams to be successful and that you were playing a role of trying to connect him with the business community. I have to ask you, it's only recently that he made a little trip to a place you worked for a long time, Washington DC, and he had a meeting with a fellow who happens to be the president of the United States. Were you surprised by the outcome of that meeting or what it seems like it was?
Well, I'm relieved, but I'm not shocked.
You said in conversation with groups and individuals that he was awfully impressive.
He's gifted. If I could give context by just saying, I only met him in late spring, early summer. And I only heard about him because my daughter and her friends were talking about him.
That he was going to win the mayor's race. And I thought that was nuts. I assumed at that point that Eric Adams would be reelected, although things changed after that, or that a more known figure, whether it was Cuomo or someone else, would win. But I was in a meeting with business leaders with Zoran in early summer, and I watched him handle himself really well under some pretty tough grilling from some of the biggest names in the city. After that, I called through a mutual friend and asked if I could come see him because I was very intrigued. In that meeting, I thought, wow, he's 34, at that time he was 33 years old, and he's going toe-to-toe with the titans of New York City business, able to hold on to his values, but listen and learn and grow and not be confrontational or argumentative. So I went and saw him and talked with him for a good hour. At the end, I said, 'How can I help you?' And it was shocking because he didn't say what most politicians say, which is he didn't ask me to give money or raise money. He asked me to help introduce him to other people like me, people who are committed to the future of the city and want to be helpful. So I set up a few convenings, like the breakfast you hosted, smart people around a table who want to talk and listen. And they went very, very well. So this is how I try to build bridges. I'm a bridge builder between this young, impressive, not terribly experienced candidate with people who are worried about the future of the city and want to understand. So I'm seeing some good signs and a few things have happened in these early weeks that I think are very important. Obviously, Jessica Tisch, not only did he ask her to stay, but he worked with her to ensure she would confirm that, and she has confirmed that. I think that was very important and a really, really good first public sign. He appointed a deputy first deputy mayor who has experience, has had the job before, is a steady hand, not a young, inexperienced, highly progressive kind of person, a pretty mainstream guy.
Those of us representing old people, I was pleased to see that.
Me too. Third, he discouraged the DSA, his party, from mounting a challenge against Hakeem Jeffries. And I thought that showed a degree of maturity and pragmatism about what would be important for New York going forward. And then lastly, he handled himself really beautifully last Friday at the White House. So I am sure there will be bumps in the road. I'm sure there will be days of difficulty, days when maybe his lack of experience shows through, but I think he's off to a pretty good start.
I think he couldn't be doing much better right now with all the cards on the table. At that aforementioned breakfast, I thought some of the attendees, not to be mentioned, had an interesting conversation about how they talked about Adams polarizing one group of people, following pretty much the playbook of President Trump and how he gathered his base and different approaches to it. But it struck me during that conversation to listen to these smart, thoughtful people talk about how both are polarizing but in different directions, obviously. Are you concerned about the degree of polarization in the country? You've been around a couple of years now. Are we more polarized now? People say this is the most polarized. Wait a minute. We had a civil war here. We've been more polarized. But are you concerned about the level of polarization right now?
I'll tell you what I'm more concerned about, and that's a related topic, and that is the polarization of media. I thought you were going elsewhere. Yes, we're polarized, and whether this is the most polarized or just another, certainly I don't think so because your civil war example is pretty good. But I always grew up, as I said, I wanted to be a journalist. I have so much respect for the media. St. Louis had two great papers. The Globe-Democrat came in the morning and the Post-Dispatch came in the afternoon, and one was a little more to the right and one was a little more to the left. But they had the same basic understanding of the facts and the news and the truth and things that happened in our city over the course of the day. But now people absorb news, whether it's traditional outlets, more modern outlets, podcasts, X, in ways that seem in silos to me that reverberate their own opinions already. And some in my friend group can be pretty lefty, and they'll say some crazy stuff, and I'm like, where did you get that information? And well, you know, this one I heard it somewhere. We all have source amnesia now. So I think that in my world, there is really only one truth. There can be more than one truth, but there are facts, and the facts need to be understood if we're going to have a civil and important conversation about politics and policy in the future of the country.
Okay, but put your head of communications hat back on. In the world that we live in now, with the communications facilities we have available to us, social media at all, ideas spread so quickly now, right, wrong, or fantasized. How do you manage to get the truth out? And you've reminded me one of the things I hate most is when someone says, 'It's my truth.' Yeah. What is that? But in a world where it seems like wild stories can spread faster than anything because they're interesting, what do we do to manage the truth?
