The Accidental Entrepreneur

Anita Brick:

Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to Career Cast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted. Oh, I would say a little bit more than delighted to be speaking with Dr. Severence MacLaughlin. He's the founder and managing partner of DeLorean ai, and he oversees the development and implementation of sentient and semi sentient systems of artificial intelligence that address complex corporate and organizational problems. The solutions offer and help in driving increased productivity financial ROI, as well as enhanced regulatory compliance in a variety of verticals. He has served in a number of leadership roles in the field of artificial intelligence and data sciences throughout his career, including chief of intelligence for the Western Hemisphere at Capgemini Invent and Global head of Artificial Intelligence for healthcare and life sciences at Cognizant Severence. I know you are like a, oh my gosh. Super, super busy guy. So thank you for making time for us,

Anita. Uh, the pleasure is mine and thank you so much for having me on

An MBA student who also has a PhD said, as someone struggling to make my academic research commercially relevant, I wonder what specific steps did you take to identify the first real world problem your expertise could solve and how did you validate it with business KPIs? That's

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

A excellent question to start off program, Anita, because when I was a PhD student, I had this entrepreneurial yearning and I was trying to find a commercial value of the actual research I was doing, which was an embryo and placental and fetal development and embryo genetics. And this is in the early two thousands. I was trying too hard. It's kind of like a love relationship, right? When you try too hard, it doesn't work out. What I found out is that we had so much data back then, you know, we had tissue data, we had protein D-N-A-R-N-A physiological data, so much data that it required a mainframe computer. And I had to start coding as I was coding. Uh, and literally I had to sit next to this mainframe computer. I thought to myself, why do businesses not use this? What I'm doing right now, this data analysis, uh, with big data and computers and coding to make better business decisions?

That was the light bulb that went off. It wasn't the exact research I was doing on how different variables affected fetal placental development. It was the way we were analyzing the data. It was kind of serendipity. And I don't think you can plan for that. Like you as an academic, I don't think you can sit there and say, Hey, I'm gonna be researching this physiological mechanism and, and think that there's a, there's a commercial outcome. If there is a commercial outcome, then the there is there and, and, and you will go down that pathway forcing it doesn't work, or is my belief it doesn't work.

Anita Brick:

It's one thing to be passionate about something. Mm-hmm

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

<affirmative>. Yep.

Anita Brick:

I think you and I share passion about things that we do, but it's another to keep going if you don't have some thread that ties you to some financial outcome unless you have other channels. Were there things that you started to see or were there threads that you were starting to tie together where you got a glimmer of commercial application?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Correct. So I I, I agree with you. And, and there was, and remember we're watching or you know, we're talking about the movie of my life, right? And this isn't a two year period. Of

Anita Brick:

Course, you

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Know, this is, I think when I was 22, what I was talking about. I'm, I'm 47 next or in two days. So you know, this is a 25 year journey. And yes, there was, because after that light bulb went off, I started thinking we need to start using data. And back then we didn't have big data. So if you remember, cash registers were not computerized back then. The mechanism to capture data out in the consumer market or in the medical field at point of care, if you will, was not available, nor was it available to transport or to store the data. I started getting interested in that. And as I moved back to the United States and started my career here, I started working at a consulting practice on the agreement I could offer a quote unquote offering of strategic analytics and helping people use their numbers and their businesses for increased productivity.

May, may not be construction or tele, uh, telecon or healthcare, you know, and then technology was evolving with me and, you know, I was coding more and more. And then I moved into the blood banking industry of all places. We used a data science at that point to improve collections, the quality of collections. And the American Red Cross at that point was about a billion dollars in the whole, and it's a $2 billion pharmaceutical company, the blood operations within the nonprofit. And we were able to turn around their productivity to about 600 million in profitability. And we called that the navigation equation. And then I thought to myself, well, if this works for this and that can turn around a nonprofit business, we could actually do this outside. So this is about 2013, 2014. And, and big data had caught up by then. And I started my own company called MacLaughlin Global, and we started working with the C Clintonian EMRs, so Meditech, and they were also Cerner and Epic, which I wasn't working with.

And then Cognizant came knocking on my door and they said, we really like what you're doing, um, with data science in healthcare. And then they headhunted me and we built a, a $50 million business out of it. And then Capgemini came and says, Hey, we love what you did at Cognizant. Can you do this for all lines of business outside of healthcare? And so we did that at Capgemini. I thought to myself at that point, if I'm doing the selling, I'm doing the development, I'm doing the marketing, I'm doing the closing. Why don't I just do this for myself versus for a company? And, and there was other factors as well. And, and that's the journey of the putting the needles together in the haystack of, of how that journey came about.

Anita Brick:

I love that. But here's something from a friend of career cast, and she said, sometimes my unconventional career path makes me feel out of place in business circles.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Wow.

Anita Brick:

How did you harness your outsider status to fuel innovation instead of holding yourself back?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Wow. I felt that one, uh, Anita a lot of times when I was at Capgemini, well, even at Red Cross, and I would come up with like, well, well, mathematically that doesn't make sense. I, I, and I would say that in meetings and people would look at me like I had three heads. Again, remember, this is before data science. This is before.

Anita Brick:

Right.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

You know, people would be like, what do you mean? I'm like, that just doesn't add up. Right? We need to start using the math to put that together. And as that evolved into Cognizant and, and Capgemini and you started having conversations with executives who are our clients at large corporations, they started to get it that the math behind this, some of the stuff wasn't adding up at first. You're laughed at. I can tell you I've been selling AI data science probably since 2016, and it would take us three or four meetings just to explain what that was. What is data science? What is the mathematics behind it? Why is that important to you? Why is that important to know your cost per unit produced? Or why is it important to know that in real time so that you know what exactly to produce, let's say from a bakery to put on the shelf per day.

We were successful, but it, it was like a 10% success rate. People were not comfortable with it. And having an unconventional background is that you're coming at business at a completely different view than most people. And I think that's a good thing because you are seeing possibly the trees from the forest, or you're seeing the forest in a completely different way than they are. And bringing that different viewpoint, I think is important. However, it will be met with skepticism or pushback or whatnot. But I think you know that deep down in your gut, if you're right, and if you're right, you, you continue on to the journey and, and people will start listening to you. But that, that communication is key at that point.

Anita Brick:

It's a really good point. And there is an MBA student who asked, I think that maybe he's bucking conventional wisdom as well and wants some insight from you.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Okay.

Anita Brick:

I'm wary of bucking conventional wisdom. What's a time you made a contrarian decision as a CEO that allowed you to take a big step forward? What was it that made you trust yourself and own your own judgment in the face of skeptics? And you've already told us that there were more than a few skeptics. What allowed you to stand up as a CEO? 'cause it can be very hard to do that when people are bombarding you externally. And maybe you had people inside

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Yeah.

Anita Brick:

Your organization who are like, yeah, you step too far

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

That I have so many examples of you, this might be the rest of the conversation.

Anita Brick:

Oh, that's fine. I mean, I'm all about, let's figure out ways to help people go beyond what they think is possible.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

So what I would first say is, if you're not bucking convention, if you are not thinking differently than everybody else, then there's something wrong. Change is, is a constant change is not a specific thing that we do. If you're thinking like everybody else in the room, there's a challenge there. And, and you're not gonna grow the company or the organization, the nonprofit is, is is not gonna grow. You're not gonna make scientific advances. Um, so I think that's number one. So bucking convention, I think is an essential part of entrepreneurialism, of breaking through. I always say to my, uh, chief Medical Officer, if I listen to my chief medical officer and I love him, his name's Dr. Gordon Cutner, we, the company would've been closed down after the first month. 'cause he was always like, oh, this will never work. Or you'll never be able to put it in the right workflow.

Or Doctors are not gonna like this. I said, Gordon, this is what's needed. There is an opportunity. We know the math works. We know if the math works and the accuracy is high, then there's an opportunity we have to get into real data. And then using that data. And that proof points is really when you, you strengthen yourself and your, your, your argument. 'cause you can go to the customer with proof. And if you have the data of your own customer, that's even better. I'll, I'll give you another reason. When I was at Capgemini, this is the reason I left. People didn't, didn't see what I saw. And the reason I left was two things. There was not a product on the market in 2019 for ai. There was not an AI product. And number two is we were not helping patients. We were helping insurance companies.

And so I wanted to combine the two. So, and I knew a Fortune 500 company would not put five people in a room, you know, 'cause they're a cost center, not a profitable center. So they're a red number for four years to build this out. I knew that. I knew we had to do it ourselves. And to prove the point in order to be a disruptor in the industry, it's not easy. And, and how do you trust your gut if you know you're right and you've been in your career and your gut instinct is telling you to do something different than what the corporate line is. I think that means that you, that you may possibly need to go out on your own. And that has been reassured to me in the last week. Anita, I'll give you this example as the CEO. When I left Capgemini created my own company.

I always trusted my gut. And that was one of the reasons I I did that, is I knew the vision for DeLorean ai where I had just had to terminate exclusivity rights with a company. It will be a short term, you know, loss to us, but it allows us to be in control of the full lifecycle of our product. And I think in terms of long-term growth and quality, I think that's better. And I have a number of people, internal, external say, said, this is the the wrong thing. And, and maybe it is, but it's my job as the CEO to have that vision and deal with the ambiguity and put the chips where I think they are to win.

Anita Brick:

That takes a tremendous amount of, of courage. It really, it really, really does.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

It, it, it's nerves of steel. It's, it's, I always say it's like plain chicken every day. And I'm sure you've heard of Elon Musk's description of, of A CEO, right? Like it's, it's looking into the abyss, chewing glass. And again, mine's not that bad for a CEO or for a leader. You have to be comfortable with ambiguity, right? You have to be comfortable with making decisions on the data you have or the, the information you have at the time. And being able to pivot the best you can.

Anita Brick:

Okay, so now you are the CEO and you also have a culture that you're developing. Hmm. So another booth, he asked, developing a culture where wild ideas are welcome is tough in my company. How did you create an environment that encourages non-traditional thinkers to voice ideas at DeLorean ai?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

So I like strange people. Anita, I like different people. Um, me

Anita Brick:

Too, me too.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

<laugh>. I collect them. Like, my favorite part of my job is hiring talent. And if you look at my team, my senior leadership has been with me for three or four jobs. So I always say I collect beautiful brains when I interview someone. Like I, I want to have the feeling when you're a kid and you're coming downstairs to see if Santa Claus has come mm-hmm <affirmative>. On Christmas morning. That, and I'm not sure if you can share that emotion, but it's the emotion I had. And that's the emotion i, I expect when I'm in an interview with someone, I'm gonna hire, creating that culture is number one about the people, right? Like you hire the right person, take the time to go through and hunt and not just to fill a a place with a body, but with the right beautiful brain. And then from wild ideas and encouraging that.

I have a couple of of things that we've structures we put in place. Number one, everybody's a shareholder. So if everybody's a shareholder, we're all rowing the same direction. So there's a better way to do it. Speak up, it'll affect your stock price at some point. So that's number one. So we're all owners of the company. It's our baby, the village raising the baby. We all have a care factor. And then number two is, uh, my expectation is that whatever your goal is is 80%. Like 80% is you do X. If you're a salesperson, you gotta sell Xs. That's 80. If you're a developer, you have to produce X. Um, and then the 20% is the really oddball ideas. You know, spend some time thinking and reading and researching strange and unusual things. I call it the, the one in the million, the home run.

That one home run could change our company or change our vision or change our direction just by one person. And then how do you actually also couch that in human resources and annual reviews? And I always like to say as I don't believe anybody's perfect. I believe people are 80 to 90% really good and no one's perfect. So HR usually focuses on the five to 10%. That's bad. I focus on the 80 to 9%. That's good. And I say, you know, you're judged not only on quality but quantity. So you gotta produce X amount, but it has to be really good.

Anita Brick:

I like that. So here's an interesting question from an MBA student and he said, limited resources always feel like a constraint for me. Of course they, right. Can you share one unconventional partnership or resource that made an outsize difference for DeLorean ai?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

I'll give you a a couple examples. We bootstrapped come, my, my domestic partner and I bootstrapped us from 19 to 22. We sold everything to put into this company. So we were very, very, very frugal. You know, we convinced all of our executives to work nights and weekends, you know, for dollars per hour. Uh, that was one way. And the biggest one, Anita, is how do you mobilize those resources if you need 'em when you did mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we had the opportunity to do a pilot with, uh, United Healthcare to run our model on all 45, 50 million people there. But they weren't paying, you know, we had to fully stock this for two years. So we sold our house and

Anita Brick:

Wow,

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

That house paid for that pilot. That pilot allowed us to get our first three clients. Uh, but again, but that was a four year investment. I made some mistakes as well. Anita, in this area, give you an example for that. 'cause I think it's important to talk about our, our our losses or our mistakes. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. As it is about our successes in 2019, 2020, we were trying to figure out how do we sell, how do we increase the, uh, aperture of our sales capabilities? 'cause it was just me. So I thought, well, if I become partners with these other organizations such as Microsoft or AWS or Teradata or Sam Novak, I can actually perpetuate my, my sales capability. So we went through all the paperwork with all these companies and the reason for that is like, we were just small. Microsoft doesn't care about you until you can bring them 10 or 20 deals. That was a huge mistake and, and lost money on that and lost time and resources. Picking partners is, is important in sales. Um, we have some great partners now, constellation kidney, innovative renal care who are delivering on those, those promises.

Anita Brick:

That's great. All right, so let's shift gears a little bit. Here's an alum who maybe isn't quite as courageous as you. And she said, I feel stuck in a safe but uninspired career path. What helped you take the leap into riskier territory? And what are a couple of things you would advise someone like me to build the confidence to pursue something more meaningful and potentially disruptive?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Yeah, that's a tough one. A Anita being in a safe career path. It's a tough place to leave. When I was at Capgemini and cognizant, we were very blessed. Going back to when I was growing up in humble beginnings on a farm. I never thought I would be, um, as blessed as I was then, not having to worry about money or things of that nature. And when you're in that position, it's, it's hard to leave it, it's hard to leave. You know, if I look back now and, and I said I left a position that was doing so successfully and I sold my house and all my investments, I think someone should have checked me into a, a psych ward <laugh> as, as I look back, geez,

Anita Brick:

Okay.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

But in the moment there was a lot of things at play. It's just not a bl black to white. There's a lot of gray there. I had had entrepreneurial endeavors beforehand. My first company was when I was 13, that was somewhat successful. But I had two or three companies in my twenties that I lost my shirt on and lost a lot of money and I never wanted to do it again. I wanted to stay in a safe environment. This idea came back kind of like when the idea was next to the computer that kept on coming back in my head, kept on coming back and I said, no, I was pushing it down, but it was like an artist. I had to get it off my chest or it was going to send me crazy. I was prepared Anita, because my whole life career was leading up to this. Like I, I had been gaining the information, I had been gaining the conversations with potential clients. I had the experience of selling it. I had the experience of building it and it came to a precipice. And that precipice was COVID. And my, my, my father unfortunately passing away,

Anita Brick:

Oh, sorry.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Uh, we were very lucky to have an extra year and a half of them, so we're blessed. But he told me, 'cause he, he had a small company, he said, take the chance, Seth. He said, what's the worst thing that could happen that you have to go back and do what you were doing before at the same job or maybe a job below that I was blessed in life with a fantastic education. I want to use that education. That means something. And that was the driving force. The fear was what happens if it fails? What happens if I lose my house? Well, we already sold the house, right? What happens if I have no money? Well, I can always teach, I can always wait. Tables was in the back of my mind. And for three years we were in poverty. Poverty, right? We didn't have, we were taking salaries, we were sleeping on other people's couches.

We moved nine times in 18 months. So you've gotta be prepared for that, that sacrifice. But I will tell you, once you do that, the freedom that comes with that, the freedom to be able to do what you wish is very powerful. And I'm not sure I could ever go back to, like we talked about earlier, that vision and, and being the unusual person background in a business area. I don't think I can go back to that, but if you are gonna take the chance, right? I would say, you know, make sure that you believe in your idea. You've prepped with your idea, you've saved, you've got all the resources that you may need. But there is risk when you do that. And that's why there's great rewards for, for entrepreneurs if they are successful. Again, life is a journey. Life is beautiful. You know, if you're stuck somewhere, then I think that's the time that you, you need to make a change. And maybe that's just another, maybe that's going to the next step in your career to a different field or whatnot. You know, it doesn't have to be starting a company.

Anita Brick:

It's a good point. And I think when you talk about preparing and saving, and one thing that you didn't explicitly say, but you sort of could have referred to is you also need to have people around you who support you. Yeah, absolutely. Like your dad, when your dad told you that, I'm sure in times of challenge and going from one person's couch to another, you remembered what he said. So having a team, I don't mean a team who is part of the company, but a team of supporters

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Yeah.

Anita Brick:

Is essential as well.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

My, my domestic partner Jacob, you know, I said to him, I was like, you know, we're not gonna be able to afford to walk into a shop and buy what we want. And his response is, I'll live in a shack with you and, uh, aw, if it wasn't for him, we wouldn't do this. You're absolutely right. You have to have that support and you have to have people that believe in you as much as you believe in you and in what you're doing. And again, it doesn't have to be leaving as drastic as I was to go start a company. It could be you moving from tech to telecom or from telecom into floristry, or you never know where you find the idea that you could make a difference in someone's life or into society or the economy.

Anita Brick:

Agree. I totally agree. Well, this is an interesting question from an alum. He said, I find it hard to maintain purpose, which is kind of where we, we went from very tactical and to the bigger picture, the way you answered that last question. So here's what he said. I find it hard to maintain purpose when daily crises distract me. Can you share how your Rhode Island farm roots helped you align business decisions with your personal values, even during stressful times?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

So I think, wow, that's a really, really good question. So I'm gonna start off with that. Purpose was one of the other reasons why I left Anita Corporate America. We, we were doing data science and maybe AI for, for healthcare companies and other companies, for insurance companies. It just didn't feel good. That's, it wasn't for the patient. And that for me was lack of purpose there. And that lack of purpose and that, you know, my mom always said too much is given much as expected. That was one of the major reasons for the impetus for us to leave. Having sense of purpose now as found the company. Like I'm all in, right? Like we've sold everything. I mean, going back to the devil risk pro, I, I'll steal a line, there is no plan B and uh, failure is not an option. And I think as I referred earlier as as the CEO, like you're dealing with the challenges that my team members weren't able to solve.

So everything that comes to my desk is new and it's a challenge to figure it out. And there are distractions and there, there are daily fires that that come up. But that ability of dealing with ambiguity, I can only see six feet in front of me and around me, and I have this much information. So this is the way we're going forward. Sometimes I think people get paralyzed with fear or for other emotions. And the ability to trust in thyself if you have information and then move forward is important. And going back to the farm and my dad who was in construction, you get up every morning at sun at sunup and you work, you just kept working and you work till sundown. I think the work ethic that my father in the farm gave me has done well. Like I, I'll outwork most people.

Coming back to success is 90% hard work and 10% luck or 10% opportunity. And that's where the, the combination of the two is where luck happened. I think even Jeff Bezos said, you know, success for entrepreneurs is being able to just keep grinding through adversarial situations for two or three years until that one opportunity pops. And then there is success. And, and I don't think we've gotten there. I mean we've, we've been, we've been successful in past series A, but like we, we haven't hit that the, the, the hockey stick yet. So I, you know, I I hope I'm right and I'm, and I continue to grind and, and that work ethic comes through. I'll give you a funny aside, my father a farmer, you know, sun up to sun down, you go to bed at like, whenever the sun goes down. But I also waited tables at night. So my father had very little sympathy that I was up at five 30 and was coming in at 1230 after waiting tables to earn extra money. Little sleep is also, uh, helpful or, or being able to function on little or smaller hours of sleep is also good.

Anita Brick:

Okay, I see that. And I like what you said, but I wanna dig a little bit deeper. It's one thing to outwork people. I understand that it's another to rise above the noise and not be swayed by the naysayers, the internal friction. How do you not get consumed by the noise?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Yeah, I, I, it's an important one where, I mean, I'll give you another example where we had a challenge, uh, Anita, that you know, our corporate enterprise clients, our hospital systems, things of that nature, our technology goes behind their firewall for smaller practices or practices, physician practice in general, may that be a specialty or a primary care. They're not big enough to afford a, an enterprise solution. So my idea that I came up with is that we have to build a, a cloud, a tenant cloud. So I call it a digital condo building where the physicians can buy lease condo and then they get the benefit of the added numbers from their colleagues, but the security of a lower cost. So it's kinda like enterprise as a, as a service.

Anita Brick:

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Has been, well thank you. Building that has been challenging, right? Because I have it, I have security, I have lawyers, I have a solution delivery, we have data scientists and everybody has an opinion and everybody has needs and wants and people try to talk me outta doing this. And it's like, this is the right decision. We're bringing a product to a group of consumers and patients that do not have access to this because of the problem that we are fixing that. And then my message to the team is, make it happen. Thou shalt do this. This is my decision, do this. Now that doesn't mean that we don't have friction. Believe me, this project has had a lot of friction on it. But it's my job to listen to everybody and make the best decision on the inputs coming in. And if there's a friction point there, it's my job and the buck stops with me. Make the decision as to which point is better or, or, or how do we move forward at that juncture.

Anita Brick:

So it sounds like the purpose, 'cause you know why you're doing this. This is ultimately for better patient care. Exactly. You know that.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Yeah. And

Anita Brick:

It seems like what gives you the ability to not get swayed by voices and macroeconomic things and all of that stuff as you drive toward the purpose and you're also seeing action and forward movement.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Yes, north Star and, and we keep moving

Anita Brick:

North Star.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

We are not a company that, that sits on our laurels. We always move, you gotta get off x as one of my former bosses used to say.

Anita Brick:

Got it. Do you have time for one more question?

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Absolutely.

Anita Brick:

Okay, good. So we like to be practical and actionable and throwing in a little encouragement there too. What are three things that you would advise someone to do to become an entrepreneur for greater career success? Longevity and a sense of contribution.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

I think there's a difference between being an entrepreneur and a small business owner. So if you go out to buy an ice cream shop or a lawn lawnmowing service, right? Like you, you have a a a goal and business model and whatnot. But I think an entrepreneur in my definition is someone that's taking great risk and looking to disrupt industry in that aspect. I think that coming outta college, I think it's very rare that you'll see those individuals that do that, that accomplish that. I mean, Zuckerberg is the, is the antithesis to what I'm about what I'm saying, but being prepared and being prepared in like having the experience in the industry or adjacent industry, having spoken to the clients or the key stakeholders and understanding what they want and then preparing in terms of, you know, hibernation, right? Like do I have the resources to, to do what I want to do is number one.

Number two is learning to listen more than talk. And I know that sounds strange. Listening all the time, right? Listening to your clients, listening to your, your followers, listening to your people that are supporting you and making sure you're taking in as much information as possible so you can make the best decisions possible. And I think the last one is be passionate about what you do. And there probably has been people that have, if you use money as a measure of success that have made a lot of money on things that they're not passionate about. But I think when you look at those disruptors in the world, do what you love and everything else will follow. Do what you love, have a north star and have a purpose. And that will drive the success. And however you measure that, people may measure that as more time with their loved ones in dollars, in the amount of time that they can spend in beautiful places. But purpose and passion I think drive you there. I think a fourth one is perseverance, so being prepared, passion and perseverance I think would be the top three.

Anita Brick:

Okay, great. So we have four, we got like a three plus, which is really good. So I thank you for that and I thank you for the work you're doing. This is important. Something you really didn't mention and maybe it would've been odd for you to say it about you, but I can say it about you. And it seems like the depth of your humanity is significant and we need more of that today because you and I both know that people are important and if we take people out of the equation, we know that is not a good place to go. So thank you for the depth of your humanity and combining it with your skills, knowledge, experience, and passion, because that is a, a very important combination. So thank you for the work you're doing as well.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Well, Nina, thank you for being so kind and saying that if I can say our catchphrase more hugs for, for more relatives is what we like to say. So I

Anita Brick:

Like it. I like it. Um,

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Well thank you so much Anita, for your time and, and allowing me to speak to your listenership.

Anita Brick:

Oh, I'm so glad you did this and I'm glad that you are. As I said, I'm glad you're doing the work that you're doing and we'll have to stay in touch so I can hear about whatever series you go after. If you go after B or you go after C or D, whatever. I wanna know. I think it's really important. So thank you for including me in your journey.

Dr. Severence MacLaughlin:

Most welcome. A thank you so much.

Anita Brick:

And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with Career Cast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.