This month, I want you to meet Aarti Shah, another impressive member of the Leadership Institute Steering Committee. If you are reading the President’s Corner because you are interested in leadership, then you may already know Aarti or have heard of her, because she has been a strong advocate of leadership training for many years and pioneered on-the-job training.
Aarti directed the statistical and analytics group at Eli Lilly, where she was instrumental in developing a comprehensive leadership training program for her staff. I remember walking past the Lilly reception at JSM shortly after I joined the FDA, and although I could not attend the reception as an FDA employee (conflict of interest), I was able to watch the slide show about the program from the doorway. I was so impressed. For a company to invest that much in developing their own staff’s leadership capabilities was truly marvelous to see!
Aarti’s own career has followed a steep leadership trajectory. From leading the statistics and analytics group, she was appointed to direct an entire drug development program, and—today—she sits in the C-suite as chief information officer (CIO) of Lilly, reporting to the CEO and serving on the executive team.
She shared with us her tremendously insightful views on what it means to be a leader in the pharmaceutical industry, and what it takes to do so successfully. Aarti emphasized the need for statistical leaders to develop confidence and move out of their comfort zone as they take on leadership roles beyond statistics. Her own career is an example of doing just that. I asked Aarti to share a few thoughts, and here is what she had to say:
At Lilly, we developed a leadership program personalized for statisticians in partnership with our leadership training organization and, over the years, I have seen so many statisticians benefit from this program. Today’s corporations need quantitative decision-makers and leaders who can bring immense business and customer value, and I truly believe statisticians are well-equipped for these roles if they take the time to invest in and develop their leadership skills.
With the ASA providing a breadth of leadership offerings, I hope many of you will take the opportunity and make the time to invest in yourself and always be a student of leadership.
The institute’s master plan involves offering training opportunities at the pre-career, early- to mid-career, and mid- to late-career stages. You read about our pre-career training ideas in the March issue of this column. For the early- to mid-career opportunity, we are planning a follow-up experience for the JSM 2018 Preparing Statisticians for Leadership: How to See the Big Picture and Have More Influence course that will be open to course registrants and past participants. Our target audience is statisticians 5–10 years post-graduation who have an interest in leadership or already hold leadership positions and want to enhance their learning. During the year, we plan to hold several workshops, both in-person and web-based, focusing on a range of skills. One module will emphasize the importance of developing business acumen as a core leadership competency, and we plan to draw upon Aarti’s expertise in building this module.
Another learning module we plan to build as part of the year-long experience involves diversity, considered from two aspects: (i) as statistical leaders, we need to recognize cultural differences among those we lead and to be aware of and learn to manage those differences for more effective leadership and (ii) as a society, we need to recognize there are cultural differences in our attitudes toward leadership and learn how to develop strong and effective leaders for our profession in light of these differences.
One of my good friends and colleagues who exemplifies what it means to be a leader in a global and diverse world is William (Bill) Wang. Bill traveled from China to Philadelphia to study for his PhD in statistics at Temple University and, after graduation, joined Merck, where he worked for many years. In 2007, he returned to China and built the statistical organization for Merck in Beijing. He became instrumental in developing the statistical community of the Drug Information Association (DIA) in China and served on the DIA Global Community Leadership Council. In 2017, Bill received the DIA Inspire Award for Global Connector, recognizing his “meritorious service through a leadership role that has advanced the mission of DIA and promoted global collaborations in order to advance health care products to patients.” Here is what Bill has to say about statistical leadership from a global perspective:
[John] Tukey said statisticians can play in everybody’s backyard. Our functional capabilities of dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity in diverse settings offer us tremendous leadership opportunities. Together, we can turn our backyard play into a whole block party!
When I thought about colleagues who could help develop the leadership and global diversity training module for the ASA, is it any surprise I turned to Bill? I am excited about building both leadership modules and look forward to the training they will provide for years to come.
Embracing diversity from a training standpoint is infinitely more enjoyable than having to react to a lack of sensitivity to diversity, but that is what I will talk about next.
Those of us coming of age during the 1960s are no strangers to the challenges that result from a lack of diversity in the workplace. For me, the challenge was being female in a field largely dominated by men. If someone told me early in my career we would still be facing sex discrimination or intimidation in this decade of this century, I would not have believed it. But here we are. So, can we learn from our collective past to finally right this wrong? I hope so. The ASA hopes so. And we have a task force set up to do just that.
Last November, the ASA Board unanimously approved a task force on sexual harassment and asked Leslie McClure to chair. The task force was proposed in response to conversations among attendees at the 2017 Women in Statistics and Data Science conference. A month later, urgency was added to the process with a blog posting about misguided behavior at a professional statistical meeting.
In seeking members for the task force, my goal was to build a balanced group. We have representation from former board members, including a past ASA president, to speak from a governance standpoint; a survey research expert to guide data collection; statisticians working in each of our three major sectors to discuss differences in work environments; and women of different generations, reflecting different work experiences.
The task force has begun its work, and Leslie’s report as chair will be featured in the June issue of Amstat News. In the meantime, I wanted you to be aware that the ASA is indeed responding to the disturbing reports of last winter and will do everything possible to ensure our members are, and feel, safe at all ASA events.
In developing leaders and taking leadership in addressing sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviors, the ASA is following the advice of the JSM 2018 theme: #LeadWithStatistics.
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