OYP Episode 38: Kim Toomer

Kim Toomer, Chief of Staff for International at Publicis Sapient, tells us about the confidence a solid fall back plan can instill in you as you pursue a new career direction, and the value of strong relationships as you work to grow your career.

Interview

Peter Szczerba - Welcome back to the Own Your Potential Podcast, where you'll hear stories from leaders across the globe, about how they've taken control of their career growth, and lessons on how you can to. I'm Peter Szczerba. And today, I'm very excited to be sitting down with Kim Toomer, who is the Chief of Staff - International at Publicis Sapient. Kim, really excited to be sitting down with you today. I feel like this one's been a long time coming. Let's just jump right into it, because it's gonna be really interesting conversation. Tell us a little bit about your career journey leading up to this point.

Kim Toomer - Excellent. Thanks, Peter. I'm excited to finally make this dream come true. I've been working towards this my whole life. So career journey, so I gotta, I gotta rewind way back to rebellious, semi rebellious teenager Kim, and trying to decide on where I was going to school. I grew up in Virginia had a lot of amazing state schools, but my parents told me they'd only support at a state tuition if I went to Georgia Tech, with their dream of me being an industrial engineer. So I immediately signed up for that anything to get a little bit away further from home, which, you know, now I live in London, so very far from home. But I jumped at that opportunity. So studied Industrial Engineering at Tech. It was a great balance for me of more hardcore engineering, but also the business side of stuff. And had a lot of interesting internships, I would say, while I was there, I worked at an energy company, I worked at GE, one summer I worked at UPS. And the kind of common thread that went through all of them was I really enjoyed the problem solving aspects of it. So when it came to figuring out what I wanted to do as a full time job, consulting just naturally lent itself to where my ambitions were, because I knew I get to solve a lot of really interesting problems, work with different interesting people. So I kind of really gravitated towards that, although I did almost take a role in a warehouse for GE, and, you know, it was it was very close, my life could have been very different at that point. Yeah, I started my career at Deloitte as an analyst, actually, in the technology practice, and ended up spending a lot of my time in retail, and finding a real passion for retail. And actually, most people at the junior levels they made you kind of move around and do different things. But I attached myself to some partners and mentors that I really loved and follow them around to different retail clients, I would say I started my career as a box kicker, literally was in a distribution center for Victoria's Secret on my very first gig. And, you know, kind of fell in love with the operations aspect of it, but knew I wanted to try different things. So worked, worked my way up through different companies, but had a bit of like a supply chain lens. And back when I was going through, it was very structured, and you did kind of your two years, and then you went off the business role. So true to form, I follow the path and went to go get my MBA at NYU, and move from Atlanta to New York, spent two wonderful years there and turn at Amazon, which was very interesting and eye opening. And I thought if anything could potentially move me away from a life at Deloitte, it would be Amazon because again, my heart was with retail, and what other retailer would I potentially want to work for. But But my love brought me back to Deloitte after business school and and so I came back and I started working with a lot of the same people I worked with, had some really interesting gigs, I'd say, you know, as I think, reflect on my career journey, you know, I was really ambitious before Business School, probably even more ambitious after Business School. So I already had my first role lined up when I came back, and it was a great growth opportunity. I'd be leading a really big team and I saw this as a great stepping stone for my leadership development. I not only that, but for you know, getting advancing even quicker, hopefully getting promoted within a year when kind of the standard career path was more of two years. So I threw everything I could add it was going to Pennsylvania every week from New York usually driving and I hate driving. But you know, you know, my heart was in it when I was when I was driving every week to Pennsylvania and um I enjoyed building a team and getting to work with different people. And I learned a lot about myself in that role. But really, the real reason I took the role was because I thought it was kind of a career trajectory, gonna be a quick path jump for me. So I went for it, I put my whole heart into it. And then actually, after about a year, I found out that I had not been promoted early as I'd wanted to be, and not gonna lie, it was a little bit dejected by that whole situation. But I've learned a lot and the process both about myself and about kind of the inner workings and politics of a big organization. So I performed really well in my role, but I hadn't kind of pre sold my dreams and desires to get promoted early. So I hadn't got that full coverage at the leadership level, pounding the table for me to get get promoted early. And while I look back, and I was really upset at the time, it was probably one of my biggest career inflections actually, because it allowed me to take a step back. And instead of doing things specifically for something, so to get promoted, it made me look at what I was really passionate about, and actually try different things. So, you know, I tried working in different industries, I tried doing more Core Strategy work, I learned what I was really good at, and what I like to do, because I think I was kind of really good at my first role. But that didn't necessarily bring me that passion. And, you know, the next year came around, and I got promoted, kind of, as I should have at that point, and continued with the way and again, you know, had an amazing time had some really amazing mentors. And then, you know, everything comes full circle sometimes in like, I think it was then another year later, they were putting me up for early promotion to the next level. And it was another point of reflection for me, at that point to figure out again, what I really wanted to do and was passionate about. So I realized, you know, as you got to that level, it was the level where it was kind of pre partner and it was going to be the most rigorous three to four years of my life very, very focused. And not only that, but they wanted me to be very like industry and functionally focused. And I liked being a jack of all trades. At that point, I kind of figured out I was good at a lot of things. And I wanted to flex some of those different muscles and maybe like learn a little bit more. So I started looking out into my network for people who were doing sort of adjacent things but like pretty similar. And that actually led me to my next role which was at Razorfish, and it was one of my previous bosses actually at Deloitte had been at Razorfish for a few years, and he was building up the consulting practice for Razorfish, and wanted me to help come over to London and build the team. So, you know, I got to scratch a bit of an entrepreneurial itch, you know, building something kind of from scratch helping build a team, which I was super passionate about. There were a lot of unknowns, obviously moving to a different country. And it was a pretty big departure from the more career consulting I'd done at Deloitte to go to Razorfish. But I felt really confident that I needed to take this chance, an opportunity because I wasn't sure if anything, like it would come back to me again. And I was really excited about it. And, you know, Peter, I know this happens to you too, when we find something we're really passionate about, we're going to give it 110% and I knew that this was something that I was gonna like go all in and you know, sink or swim, but hopefully be able to swim maybe swim further than I thought I could so hopped over actually, with Razerfish over to London, and I would say about six months into it, we actually merged with Sapient at the time. So again, my world got kind of toppled upside down a little bit because kind of what I'd signed up for wasn't exactly what was coming and actually spoke to one of my mentors because I was, you know, a little personally like her by it and questioning, should I go back to Deloitte, I had like a safe net. I had a great you know, mentorship and relationships with all the people I knew I was really well supported. And I felt like I was swimming on my own a bit because I was in a different country, you know, in a different company, who I felt was a bit topsy turvy at the time, and she told me to just like lean into the experience and instead of resisting what was happening, figure out how I could make the situation better. So she said get on any integration words you can help, you know, make the transition from Razorfish to sapient be as strong as possible. And I did that. And I stayed again in the consulting team, but it was much more established at CBN. And so it was kind of nice, nice, warm, safe hands. And I was flexing and growing through the projects that I was working on. So I spent some time in Dubai working for one of their telcos doing a retail store of the future. So it was like, adjacent again, to stuff that I was already really comfortable with, but in a completely different geography doing completely different things. So it was kind of growing that way. And then that brought me to where I am today, as a chief of staff for Publicis sapient, focused on the international business.

Peter Szczerba - Very cool. I mean, there's so much that I want to unpack in there. And I want to touch on a couple of things shortly. But first, I do want to touch on what chief of staff is because I think that this happens over and over at organization, his folks see you kind of at the forefront of a lot of our global facing communications. And you know, in absence of being involved with the global leadership team and understanding your role. The question is often what is Kim's role? What does that person do? So So talk a little bit about that? What is the chief of staff? And

Kim Toomer - it's really interesting you say that, because I get that question all the time, too. And actually, almost everyone's reference point is West swing, or something to do with the US government. Yeah. So they all kind of know a little bit about what it is, but not exactly what it is. And to be fair, it is a very nebulous role. And one of the things I found with it is as a Nigel's role change, and my role changed supporting him, we've been able to flex what I focus on, and what I do to be the areas that he needs, the more more support and areas that I really enjoy. So what I would say, and kind of a nutshell, is it's almost scaling the CEO, and trying to make his life easier. So for instance, I will, you know, help attend meetings or help him prep for meetings, represent his point of view, help share information back and forth, and also really involved in shaping our strategic priorities. So where the company's going for this year, you know, what's our strategy, working with our different industry leaders to shape what those are and where we should be heading. So every day is very different. I can't, like tell you what one day is going to be to the next, which is one of the things that keeps it really exciting and helps me get up in the morning. But maybe if I take you through, like a typical day that might, yeah, let's go. Okay, so we started talking, I think a little bit about some of these things about last week. So I'll, I'll hop back to last week since you brought up the town hall thing. So I think a lot of people might know my name, if you're at Publicis Sapient from the global town halls that we do, they were pretty frequent during COVID. But now they're once quarterly and I am sort of the emcee in the face of them. But the reason that I do that role is because we're very, very integrated in shaping what the content is helping figure out what key messages we need to do at different points based on where we are in the year, what's going on with Publicis groupe business, what's going on with our clients and the world at large. So I help kind of work with the team and shape that. So like, last Thursday, we had our first hybrid Town Hall, which was super exciting to be back in the office. So helped shape everything that went into it. And then on the day of you can see I'm kind of the face, sometimes of it. I know Nigel, and Cannes and Natalie are also kind of the regular the four of us have the regular drumbeat of a town hall. But I help look through all the questions that are coming in in the q&a and tee up, which ones I think we should prioritize and which ones are next. And, Peter, I know you've been behind the scenes, and I think people who are involved in a town hall are consistently surprised at exactly how much work and thought goes into any particular town hall. So those of them of themselves are kind of a big lift. So we usually have to to kind of hit different time zones. And then in between, that I was scrambling because we had the wonderful announcement of our new chief growth officer who just joined us at the beginning of this week, Arthur, which we're really excited about. So it's helping work on the communication strategy, help ensure he was getting on boarded properly, and then also help With the next generation leadership team, which Peter You are a very prominent part of. And we are getting geared up for the next cohort of that. So I was working with internal communications team to make sure communications was working with the current cohort of the Next Generation Leadership Team, to think through what questions should be on the application and making sure we were learning and refreshing it, and just making sure all the pieces were together. So again, everything can be pretty nebulous, and it changes from day to day. But I think I would view my job mostly is like powering people around me a lot of times Nigel, in this instance, I view myself as a connector across the different teams, and somebody who helps work and do problem solving, whatever, you'd be surprised what comes up on day to day that might need solving or attention, but I kind of help I view those as my three hats that I tend to have.

Peter Szczerba - It just sounds like such a unique role, this idea of being an extension of CEO of a multi billion dollar company, both internal facing activities, as well as like client facing activities. You talk about helping shape strategy, helping communicate his perspective and calls he can attend. Like, that's a really high pressure role. And I imagine you're probably on call a lot of the time, but I think so, you know, I think that's a pretty good description of what the role can be even though you know, to your point, it sounds like it's different every day. But how do you how do you do you apply for that kind of role? Can you walk us through a little bit how that came to be, because you're on a very clear path, even though there were some pivots along the way, and you had to adjust and persevere some changes organizationally, Razorfish intervals to sapient. And ultimately, you still stay the course and world consultant, right. Yeah. And so while there were changes, you ultimately were doing largely a similar role in different contexts. This is very different. So how did this happen?

Kim Toomer - Yeah, so I did actually apply for the role. So interestingly enough, my two predecessors before me in this role, were actually external hires. And one of the things that they discussed when they were hiring for the next person for this role was that it might be nice to have somebody who is internal, who kind of understood the organization a bit better, and could be able to navigate it to help kind of the ramp up period a little bit. So actually, when I got it, they were speaking to both internal and external candidates. So they looked at the strategy and consulting team, specifically in London, because actually, at this time, Nigel was the CEO of the international business. So I was actually kind of applying to be the chief of staff for international. And my boss at the time had approached me saying, you know, we've got this role. And I think you would be amazing at it, I don't want to lose you on the consulting team. But I just don't know when a roll like this would come along again. And I think you'd be really amazing at it. And it would be great exposure to you. So I explored it a bit more speaking to the person who was leaving role to understand what it was speaking to the other people on the Strategy Team and a few people on the leadership team to understand like exactly what it was, and opportunities to potentially shape it. So I did a bit of homework to figure out exactly what it was. And then actually had a bunch of interviews for it. And ultimately ended up having a case study interview for it. And it was kind of funny, because they gave me the case study. And I think I had 36 hours to present something. And I was actually flying back to the States. It was right around Fourth of July. So I like 36 hours, but kind of sans internet at that point on an international flight. And my meeting, I believe was at 6am, the day after I had landed from a red eye flight. So I can't say that I was at my top top position when I did it, but I guess it went well enough. And they asked me if I was interested in having the role. And I, you know, was there again, reflecting as you said, I had a very clear career path. But I felt like this was an opportunity that was potentially once in a lifetime. And I was very comfortable in the relationships I built and the skills I had when it came to consulting and knew if I needed to, I could always go back to consulting. And so I jumped at this opportunity to be able to have this role. And you know, since then, like I said, literally No two days are the same and I've grown A lot in this role, you know, as Nigel switched from CEO of international to CEO of global, even our relationship and all the things that I was involved with change, because the scale and scope of it's just so much bigger, it was hard for me to even fathom when that transition happened. And I'm really lucky. Actually, Peter, you know, Lucy, well, Lucy is also Chief of Staff she focused. She's in North America, and we partner really well together, I think we have very, like complimentary skill sets. And we've both kind of grown into the role and found are places that were most comfortable and feel like we can make the most impact. But it's also really nice to have somebody who has all the same context as you to bounce ideas off of, and like, honestly, just divide up the workload, because as you said, it can be a lot of times.

Peter Szczerba - Yeah, I think what I just find this so interesting it because, you know, I would say that once a consultant, always a consultant, you could absolutely get back on the bike and remember what it's like to ride it. And so I guess my question is, you made this leap of faith, it seemingly paid major dividends, and you've had explosive growth, because of just the variability of the role and the exposure and the global scale. But I guess my question is, is having had this experience or continuing to have it 10 years from now? Right, are you? Are you a career Chief of Staff now in the future? Or do you go back to consulting with new superpowers?

Kim Toomer - Oh, it's a it's a really good question. And I've reflected on it a lot. And interestingly, Nigel, and I have had lots of conversations about it along the way, when I first took the role, he said, You know, I want you to be in the role for at least three years, so that we can figure out our ways of working and stuff together and be comfortable with each other because we've built such a trust that he he just knows, like, I can almost sometimes assume what he will say, and it's easier for him to just say yes, then you know him to have to kind of do a brain dump for me. And then then when he pivoted to global one, you know, we had the conversation again, like, I want you to come with me, I think we need to have you Lucy was like a lifer. She had a career, obviously before Chief of Staff, but she was hired into a chief of staff role. So it was quite different. But he said, You know, I want you to continue on this journey. And it's a really nice thing for me, too, has been all three of us kind of work so well together. And I've got Lucy to look at of, you know, she's got two younger kids, and I can see how she can balance that. And I can see how I can continue to grow in this role, but also have, you know, a life outside of it. And I, you know, right now, I would say I'm a career chief of staffer, you know, obviously, as we discussed, sometimes you have these reflection points in your life, so you never know where you're going to be. And you never know, like, I would never would have said this role to begin with. So you just never know what's going to get dropped on your lap at times. But at this point in time, and as I look forward, I still see still awesome growth opportunities. And I'm still passionate when I wake up every day. So I don't have any desire to go back to consulting. Sometimes actually, Nigel tells me I can like turn off the consulting, because I'll pick up an assignment and I'll turn it into a consulting assignment where, like, I just needed like a yes or no your opinion on it. And I can't help myself, I'll be like, here's the PowerPoint presentation that I made for you. So you're right, once a consultant, always a consultant, and I'm so comfortable, I can pick that right back up when I need to. And I do still get to apply a lot of the skills. But yeah, I think right now and for the foreseeable future Chief of Staff all the way

Peter Szczerba - Yeah, I think I could imagine that being a pretty confidence inspiring position to be at and you know, you have a very clear fallback plan, but you have something that is you know, lighting the fire of passion for you right now in your in your role as chief of staff. I want to talk a little bit about you know, something that is a common experience for consultants, though, because you even as you lead up to your constants, consulting career, talk about working, you know, at GE at UPS across different internships, then an Amazon internship later on, but then also probably against numerous different clients that you worked with, as a consultant in different organizations. I think a lot of consultants talk about how exciting is to be able to work on these different businesses in these different industries because he's different go to market models, effective for products, services, and all those types of things. One thing that I always find super interesting is the difference in organizational culture of the various clients that I work on. So just seeing like, how these people are incentivized to perform really well and seeing how their teams are structured and the behaviors and and stuff like that. And so it's, I find that over and above to influence and contribute to impacting the business of these different organizations, I also get to experience organizational cultures, as if I had been working at all these different places. Yeah. But I always end up being comforting, comforted by the fact that I don't desire those organizational cultures. And I like the high performance culture of a consulting organization. For me, primarily, it was sapient, did you find that that was beneficial to you, especially when you now end up in a role? Where you're almost helping define the organizational culture of pools SAP? And given the role that you have?

Kim Toomer - Yeah. And I would say, you know, I was trying intentionally not to name drop clients, because, you know, there's always confidentiality. But I've wanted, like, I've really run the gamut. I'm sure a lot of people have, but I don't know if you know, Zappos in North America, it's, it's got one of the wackiest, craziest cultures. So I've seen like, the kind of wild wild west of cultures and, like, almost self managing, and, and that sort of thing. And I've seen the super rigid, super structured organizations as well. And yeah, I've taken things that I think are powerful and impactful from different ones of them. And then, you know, kind of figured out how to apply them in context, because I think one of the biggest things that spending time with like Nigel and Lucy has taught me is how important context is and making a decisions. And while you might, on paper, think an organization are another is better than the other. It's so variable based on, you know, what they're focused on what area like what stage of their growth, they're in, what geography they're in, you know, there's just so many different facets of it. So it's been incredibly interesting to consult for them and be on the inside. But I've always said, I'm happy where I am, which reinforces me that I'm making the right decisions that there was no point in my career and I had been approached by several clients to potentially jump to the other side. And that I never kind of made the jump because I do like our our culture of performance

Peter Szczerba - Yeah, that resonates with me hugely. And I think the one thing that I've walked away with as a learning and I think that applies to a lot of people, is that when you're potentially unhappy in your current situation, or your role, and you're looking at new opportunities, as you said, on paper, a company might look great, and you know, the offer and the title and the money that they're offering, you may look really good. But you really need to do your due diligence and assess what that organizational culture is like, because that's really going to define your experience. And so for me, that's been become very glaringly obvious as a result of experiencing so many organizational culture is working across 20 plus current clients, or whatever it's been in my career. So I think that's a really, really good sentiment to safely bring to light. I want to totally pivot now, though, and bring back something that you talked a little bit about in terms of the next generation leadership team, because I know that one of your passion areas and passion seems to be a theme here is shaping and influencing leadership and future leaders in an organization. Talk a little bit about why that's important to you. And then maybe from there, talk about what have you done to bring that to life at Publicis Sapient.

Kim Toomer - Yeah, it's a reflected and you, you talked about my career pivot from being a career consultant into a chief of staff role. And one of the things as I reflect back that I really did miss is I was a people manager to a lot of people, and also was managing people on projects. And in a chief of staff role. I'm lucky to have a very tight small knit team, but I don't necessarily have as much influence over, you know, helping the careers of junior people. And I realized that was where I, again, I got a lot of energy from it, because I enjoyed it. And if I look back on my career, I got to where I am, because I had passionate managers who were really invested in developing me. And so I want to be able to give that forward. And, you know, the idea, Nigel took over as global CEO about two and a half years ago, and he brought up the idea of, you know, I want a next generation leadership team. Let's figure that out. And I jumped right at it because, like I said, it married some of my passions of like the leadership development piece, and I also really like solving problems. So I kind of ran with it and did a lot of research on what other like, leadership teams were within Publicis groupe within Poulos to sapient. Externally and kind of developed what I thought should potentially be our next generation leadership team and you know, kicked around ideas then with with Nigel and Lucy, and then, you know, as all good consultants do these days, we said, let's, let's go let's launch and see what it is. So, you know, when we started to over two years ago, it was Literally from scratch, and it was just an idea. And we had to design everything from soup to nuts. But I was really excited because again, I got to like scratch that itch of leadership development and also the kind of structuring something end to end and problem solving. And, you know, got to bring this next generation leadership team to life. And I immediately was seeing some of the benefits of it. So bringing in new and energized thinking and a voice of, you know, all of the people to the leadership team, the people in our company, one of the amazing things about publicists, EPN is people have been here for 20 plus years. But then to your point, they're not always experiencing what's going on outside. And I think we're at an interesting inflection point within businesses and companies where people aren't necessarily staying with one company for as long. Whereas, you know, previous generations, they would just be lifers at one company and understanding, you know, what's making people stay, what's making people leave, what gets them excited to get out of bed, what do they think are the most important things to change. And, you know, the next generation leadership team has not only brought that perspective, but come up with some great initiatives to help address some of those things and like capitalize on some of those opportunities to help continue to evolve the Publicis sapient culture and make it a better place to attract and retain some of our top talent. And I think that next generation leadership team also gives the people who are in it a great opportunity to get exposed to the inner workings of the business. I would say not to put words in your mouth, Peter, but you know, you probably had no idea what the left. Yeah, yeah, getting some sort of a change through and a company of our size would be. And when you think of all of the different aspects between geographies and how people do stuff and cultural norms and literal like rules and regulations from governments, it's just pretty massive. And it's been just amazing to see how the team has kind of rolled up their sleeves and help Institute some some really exciting changes in the business.

Peter Szczerba - Yeah, and I think the the thing and having had this really crazy experience over the last two years is just recognizing that, like organizations need to have a platform like this to to foster high potential young leaders, because your band aiding people to think disruptively, and try and innovate and bring new thinking to leadership team and to a global organization. Like that is a daunting undertaking, but it's one that's going to one stretch those people and really force them to think outside of the box. But then it's actually going to bring innovative thinking and, and new initiatives and processes and stuff like that to an organization that can transform people's experiences more broadly, I think that is a really important opportunity for people to have. Yeah, I think equally important is when you're trying to build a program like this, you know, defining criteria for what a high potential future leader is, is like super critical to make sure that the program is a success to make sure people have fulfilling experiences. So how do you define that? And then has that how's that evolve for this upcoming cohort?

Kim Toomer  - Yeah, I think we had some ideas when we started. And we tested and learned a lot with the first cohort. And so again, I feel like you said the theme of this was passion. But I would say, one of the biggest things that I look for in somebody is somebody who's passionate, because if they're passionate about a topic, they'll be willing to move mountains to make it happen. Yeah. And they'll be willing to go above and beyond because, look, this isn't, you know, what you're doing from your nine to five, sometimes this is your, like, nights and weekends, and you have to be able to be really excited about something and the change that you can drive to be able to give everything to it. I think they need to be able to work with ambiguity and complexity. Yeah. Because, you know, the, the problems or the opportunities ahead are not clearly defined, if it was obvious something would be happening already for it. Right. Right. And so, you know, I think sometimes that was difficult for some people, especially when you have a lot of context switching because you've got your day to day role. And then you've got the NGlt so kind of coming in and out of it. And being able to put the headspace in, like on cracking a really complex problem and dealing with you know, no straight answers and no sometimes owner to go to to be able to ask like this specific question. Sometimes you're getting information from so many different people, and to be able to deal with a really ambiguous environment, I think are probably like the two biggest things and, you know, this program as with so many programs, I feel like it's one that you get out of it, what you put into it and I've seen for I'm obviously like the sidelines and helping lead the team, that the people who put the most into it got the most out of it. And I've seen their growth and evolution over the two years. And it's been really wonderful for me to be able to be on the journey with them. So yeah, I think passion and I think ability to deal with ambiguity, probably that the two biggest things.

Peter Szczerba - I think what's really awesome about those that criteria is that that's largely criteria for doing well in your career more broadly speaking, as well, I think, you know, across a lot of these conversations across different industries, different professions that have spoken with people, they talk about the importance of focusing on impact, or making sure that it's passion that's guiding their decisioning. And, and that they find happiness in their roles as a result of that. And I think the, you know, that resonates truly also with an experience on a platform like this for me, I zeroed in from day one on what I was passionate about. And that helped push me to solve problems in spite of obstacles, in spite of ambiguity, as you mentioned, in spite of having to move mountains. And at the end of the day, it made for a really satisfying and growth driving experience. So I really like that sentiment, both for a platform like this, but then just more generally speaking for how people approach their careers and the decisions they make. I think as just a final question, I'd love to understand, just, you know, as you continue as Chief of Staff, as you may be in the future returned to consulting, what is Kim want to be remembered as what do you want your brand or legacy to be when it's all said and done?

Kim Toomer - I think I want to be somebody who was seen as helping other people, as you know, bringing a laugh, somebody who's fun to be around. And I think, you know, we spend so much time at work. And I think sometimes people take it too seriously. But I would like to say that I'm somebody who doesn't take it too seriously, you can see that probably today. You could see it when I host a town hall, somebody said you have a lot of jokes. It's true. I don't think you know, what we're doing is very serious sometimes. But I think if people enjoy working with you, it'll help go a long way.

Peter Szczerba - I absolutely agree. I think lots of people can perceive their roles in the work that they do is extremely serious. But bringing levity to it and joy to it makes the experience that much smoother, makes it easier to work hard and pursue the big impact opportunities. And I think that's a really important thing to acknowledge, especially from somebody like you that has such a, you know, high stakes role as being the extension of a CEO. Yeah, and I think that's a really great sentiment to sort of leave off on.

Kim Toomer - Even just one more point on that I have no formal ownership over any particular like part of the business. So my role is very relationship and influence, focus. And I think if people like working with you, they're going to come to you with new opportunities. They're gonna help you when you have something that needs helping with and I think that's helped me bring and build some really strong relationships is just kind of being someone who's always willing to roll up their sleeves and help with whatever problem is in front of us.

Peter Szczerba - It's absolutely, Kim has been a phenomenal conversation. I appreciate your time as always, and I look forward to checking in in the future and seeing how things are going on the executive Chief of Staff side of the world. So thank you.

Kim Toomer - Thanks, Peter.