Dealing With Headwinds Helps Build Resilience, So That You Don't Accept Failure or Setbacks
Adam Bryant
Senior Managing Director at The ExCo Group; Author, "The Leap To Leader" & "The CEO Test" (HBR); World50 Advising Member
R. Nolan Townsend, CEO of Lexeo Therapeutics, shared powerful lessons with Rhonda Morris, the CHRO of Chevron, and me for our interview series with prominent Black leaders. Subscribe here for all Leading in the B-Suite interviews.
Morris: What were some early influences that shaped who you are today?
Townsend: I'll start much further back. My great-great-grandfather was the first African American attorney in the state of Virginia. He was born enslaved, but in the 1800s somehow earned his freedom and went on to be educated and he became the first Black attorney in Virginia, which I think was a pretty major milestone. He also was a civil rights activist under the mentorship of Booker T. Washington.
From then on—and this is my mother's side of the family—all the members of the family were both college- and graduate-school educated. This is a very important theme throughout my mother's family, including my aunt, who was the chairwoman of the board of Spelman College in Atlanta.
On my father's side, it was almost the opposite. He was born into very impoverished beginnings, and worked his way out of that to earn a law degree from UCLA. These are probably two opposite ends of the spectrum of the African American experience in the United States. Both have had their influence on me, but what's most important is how education was the common link between the two. So that’s always been a focus for my parents and for myself.
What also influenced my interest to move into business was my aunt—the one who was the chairwoman at Spelman College. She was a senior executive at a number of corporations, reaching C-suite roles in those organizations, and she did a lot of business travel. When she visited us, she would arrive with all this foreign currency. I remember at a very young age trying to figure out what all this money was and what it was worth. That triggered some interest in business and the global economy and Wall Street.
Bryant: What conversations did you have with your aunt about the foreign currencies?
Townsend: She explained to me the differences in the business cultures in Japan and Brazil and all these other countries. That helped me become more aware of the scale and complexity of business challenges around the world. I was intrigued by them. In my career, I’ve spent almost a decade working outside of the US in various countries.
Morris: When you were a teenager, was there a moment when the drive and ambition kicked in? Did you know you wanted to be a CEO when you were older?
Townsend: Early on, I had an interest in pursuing a career on Wall Street, and I did progress in that direction. Pretty much every summer, during middle school and high school, I was in a business program and different kinds of enrichment programs, even on weekends. I had internships during college at investment banks, and my first few jobs out of college were focused on finance, as well. But two things influenced my interest to move more into a general management or C-suite leadership positions.
The first is that Harvard Business School is a general management school, and I learned a lot about general management in that context—you hear from a lot of general managers and CEOs at the school. That helped open my eyes to the attractive aspects of that role. The other was spending time on Wall Street in investment banking. What I began to realize was that the decision-makers for a lot of the transactions were CEOs. So I started asking myself, do I want to support a strategic transaction in an investment banking advisory role or do I want to be the person who's actually making the decision about pursuing the transaction in the first place and realizing the potential of whatever the transaction is meant to achieve?
My admissions essay for Harvard Business School stated that I wanted to be the CEO of a biopharmaceutical company. That’s slightly different from what I’m doing now, but by and large, by the age of 44, I've effectively attained the role that I aspired to in my business school admissions essay.
Bryant: You spent several years in roles around the world at Pfizer. What did you learn from those experiences?
Townsend: First, I think Pfizer's a great company, with a great track record in the pharmaceutical industry. It does a lot to develop talent, and I'm an example of that. They gave me an opportunity to work abroad for ten years in five different countries. Every two years, I was moved to a new role with broader responsibilities. That's a very attractive profile of a company that's willing to make those types of investments in their employees. Working in different cultures is challenging but it comes with a substantial learning and opportunity set. Every culture I stepped into was different.
Morris: In many countries outside the United States, we are seen as Americans first, rather than as Black Americans. Did you experience that?
Townsend: Very much so. In South Korea, for example, I didn't feel or observe much of a distinction between being a White foreigner or a Black foreigner. If you don't speak Korean, and you don't know their culture, then you're a foreigner. So in a way, there was some comfort in that. I found my experiences working in Asia to be truly exciting.
I also was the country manager for Pfizer's organization in Ukraine, and I probably came across fewer than ten people of African descent in my entire time within the country. And this is a country of 45 million people. So you could see that there was definitely not the diversity there that you would see in Western Europe—for example, in London or Paris. But the other side is that there wasn't a culture of racism or anything of that type in that country. I didn't experience anything problematic in Eastern Europe from that perspective. I just don't think they had enough experience with people of color there to have any real perspective on it.
Bryant: That was a big shift for you going from a global company like Pfizer to CEO of Lexeo, a smaller company. Can you talk more about that?
Townsend: A key part of the decision for me was what I was going to learn by attempting to launch and build such a company, including raising capital, attempting to pull together a gene-therapy pipeline, and building a team outside the context of a large corporation. It does come back to these early influences around education. This has been as educational as any degree that I have from Harvard or the University of Pennsylvania. The work to form a company is education, and the idea that someone could be paying me to do that was even more attractive.
At Pfizer, I had successive general management roles outside the US in small and mid-sized countries and then regional roles across some of the operating divisions. The roles outside the US were interesting in that you have P&L and general management accountability for a country organization.
So even though you are in a large corporation, the roles are pretty autonomous and entrepreneurial. If you deliver your revenue and profits, you’re kind of left alone. When I moved back to the US, I missed some of that autonomy and entrepreneurship. I also began to understand the full potential of what genetic medicines can deliver to truly transform human health.
Ultimately it comes back to betting on yourself. It's a conviction around the background and experience you have, and a conviction around the nature of the entrepreneurial opportunity that you're looking at. That's the draw and the drive to entrepreneurship.
Morris: I imagine you’ve encountered a lot of headwinds in your life because of your race. How have you navigated them?
Townsend: There have been headwinds, and certainly there's a lot of different ways you can tackle them. One way is to become frustrated or upset or even discouraged by those headwinds, and I have friends and others who feel those things. The way I've looked at it is that you're building resilience from those headwinds, and that resilience can be useful in progressing one's career. You’re able to work through challenges in a more meaningful way. It's obviously not a positive thing to experience those headwinds, but there is that silver lining of helping to build resilience. Over the long term, that can help you be more successful than if you had not experienced those headwinds.
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Bryant: Can you share an example of the headwinds you've faced?
Townsend: I was pursuing a summer internship, and I believe I did not get the internship because of my race. I ended up having to work a lot harder to get to the type of job I wanted, including doing more networking and more interviews and refining how I interviewed. It was probably a tougher road to get to the same job than someone who is not of my race. But again, it helps create resilience. It can create the type of personality where someone just doesn't accept failure, doesn't accept the setback. They try to get around it, over it, through it, no matter what's in front of them.
Morris: Where are you on the optimism-versus-pessimism scale that things will actually get better?
Townsend: On the surface, it looks like we may be even regressing with respect to progress for African Americans in corporate America. I think some of the recent rulings in the Supreme Court clearly are aimed at pulling back some of the programs that would have supported that progress. And I believe it's likely to result in a slowing or stalling of progress.
However, I think there's a byproduct of this that may be productive. Do we have enough people in the African American community who consider entrepreneurship as a viable career path? Maybe the stalling of progress of African Americans in the corporate world will yield more people saying, “I want to go be an entrepreneur. I want to bet on myself, I know what I'm good at, I'm a leader in my industry, and I don't feel that I'm progressing enough in the corporate world. So I'm going to start a company or create a role that ultimately allows me to realize my skills and talents and experience in a different context.”
So this stalling or slowing of progress in corporate America could unleash the collective energy of the African American community into entrepreneurship and create more companies that are led by senior African American executives. Think of it in terms of opportunity cost. If your opportunity cost is high, you probably won't leave to start your own company. If your opportunity cost is low because you're not progressing, then it's more likely that people leave to go to take that path.
Another ancillary fact that I would point to is that here at Lexeo, over 40 percent of our 80 employees are people of color, and this is without any clear diversity programs or diversity hiring programs. That 40 percent figure is more than double any company I'm aware of in the space and probably a lot higher than most other companies in any sector.
We can demonstrate that there is sufficient diverse talent with the right skill sets to work effectively in the biotechnology industry. And that there is a lot of diverse talent with the right scientific backgrounds, and that diverse talent could be applied to achieve great results and outcomes. That's the work we're doing at the company.
Bryant: What was your reaction as you watched the early momentum around DEI grow after George Floyd was murdered?
Townsend: I was encouraged to see the groundswell of interest. Did I believe it would continue at that same degree of intensity for an extended period of time? To be honest, I did not. I thought it was going to be a short-lived surge, but I think we should take progress in whatever form or place we can get it. As I mentioned, I don't think corporate America is coming up with programs to support colleagues. I see an underrepresentation of people of color pursuing more entrepreneurial paths. We need programs that could actually move the needle on entrepreneurship, including how to raise capital, how to develop networks with investors, and how to think about building teams in new companies.
Morris: Do you have any advice for corporate America on what they should be doing differently to developing and promoting Black talent?
Townsend: The first thing is that it should not be surface-level initiatives. These should be real initiatives that are focused on truly developing the talent into operating and P&L roles that provide a path to the C-suite. It's not just about reaching a certain level of seniority. It’s how much influence and impact those roles can have that really matter. And it's not just a matter of whether you have diversity on a larger scale. Do you have diversity in the places where you're going to have that type of impact on the customers you're serving or the stakeholders you're working with?
Bryant: What career and life advice do you share with young Black professionals?
Townsend: The common thread, whether you are working in large or small companies, is that your aptitude, your intelligence, and your work experience will only get you so far. You have to invest in building relationships with people around you, above you, below you, and outside your company, as well. You never know when you will need to leverage those relationships in your career. It's not like school where you study for a test, take the test, and get a good grade. There are other factors at work that will determine your ability to progress in your career, and a lot of those are related to relationships.
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1wThe pullback on diversity efforts and other factors that have hobbled the advancement of Black executives does not surprise R. Nolan Townsend, the CEO of Lexeo Therapeutics, who faced headwinds along his road to the C-suite and says it's a chance to learn resilience. "It can create the type of personality where someone just doesn't accept failure, doesn't accept the setback. They try to get around it, over it, through it, no matter what's in front of them," Townsend says.
Senior Managing Director
1wAdam Bryant Fascinating read. Thank you for sharing
Owner at First Page Impact creating high-converting digital solutions.
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