This Girl KAM with Jill Donahue

Liv: Hi Jill. Welcome to This Girl KAM!

Jill: Hey Liv. I’m so happy to be here. I’ve listened to you on many, many hikes, so it’s fun to be here chatting with you.

Liv: Take everybody through who Jill is, and tell me about your family life and your work life to date. Let’s go back to the start!

Jill: Sure. I’ll try to do the nutshell version! My journey in pharma began many years ago, carrying the bag, like many people out there. I came into the industry with, a slightly different background. I came in with a background in psychology, versus sciences, and what I noticed was that everyone around me was strong in the life sciences. Our industry has that. The data, the science, we’re good at that. That arm is really strong, you could say. But the other arm, the behavioural science arm, I looked around and thought, wow, these people aren’t so expert at how we engage and communicate in a way that the person in front of us listens and acts in what we do. That was my fascination, with psychology, and adult education. I did my master’s in adult education with a focus on influencing healthcare behaviour change. because I was so fascinated by this and did research on it and found it just super interesting and I thought we could do so much better than what we were doing. If we could get both those arms strong, that’s when we could create some great outcomes. And then when I was 35, that’s, that’s when things shifted for me. And that was because, of something that happened, my father died as a result of a prescribing error when I was 35. Being in pharma, I was, so frustrated thinking, what if, what if dad’s doctor’s, MSL or KAM or rep or whomever, what if that person had been better able to access and engage my dad’s doctor to know the right product at the right time for the right patient? So that deepened my interest in figuring this out. And, I started interviewing thought leaders, like bestselling authors like Dan Pink and Gretchen Rubin, and other people that I admire like Adam Grant, and asking them how their research could help us in our industry. And then translating that for my peers. So, I wrote a couple of books. I was so excited about what I was learning. I wrote a book and that became a bestselling program in Canada where I’m from. And, then I thought, what if we could change the industry? I started learning things about how to influence behaviour change and realised that there was this foundational piece that was missing. And it revolves around trust and how trust has been diminishing in our industry. That led to, I started to research the purpose and that in our industry is being patient-focused. So, I’ve been talking about patient centricity since before it was a term. Fast forward to today, I’ve been, teaching and researching, for the last 20 years now, and just love it. Amongst them started a non-profit group to create the world’s first-ever patient-centric benchmark survey because I realized that what was foundational to everything, I was teaching was being purpose-driven, which is also being patient-centric.

So that’s that. I meant that wasn’t much of a nutshell, was it?

Liv: It was less than 5 minutes so it was a pretty good nutshell! I only knew, I only found out recently that you interviewed the likes of Dan Pink. That must have been fascinating.

Jill: Yeah. Oh, so beautiful. I just love him.

I’ve interviewed him twice and I’ll tell you about a little side from one of the interviews, if, you are also a Daniel Pink fan, I asked him at the end of one of the interviews, if everything he wrote said videos, everything was erased and it was his last day and he could just leave three messages for his kids. What would it be? And he, he rocked back and forth as he does. And then he looked up at me and I could see tears in his eyes. You can’t see it on the video. But he looked up at me and he had tears in his eyes and he said, number one, the number one thing? Be kind. If my children are kind. That’s most important. He’s just so awesome.

I’ve learned a lot from him. His books, and Adam Grant, there are so many of them, out there that can help us. And, and that’s why I love bringing their research, their ideas and translating it to how that applies in our industry.

Liv: So, we’ve got so much more to dig into there. But just before we do, tell me a little bit about your home life First. You say you live in Canada. Tell me more about that. You have children, don’t you?

Jill: Thank you. Thank you for asking. Yes. My pride and joy. I have three girls, my eldest is near you now living in London, UK with her fiancé off on her career journey. She’s a complete joy. All three of them are. My middle one is in third-year university and plays volleyball at the University of Trent here in Canada. And then my youngest, my 16-year-old, another volleyball player. They’re both six-foot one!

It’s fun. Very fun.

And I have my wonderful husband, of course, the father of my, three girls, and my business partner as well. We are partners in everything, which is very interesting!

Liv: Oh, that’s fabulous.

Jill: He’s a very special man. And we’re all so lucky to have him.

And then I have my mother, my mother’s part of our, extended family here. She used to live around the corner and now she’s in a senior’s home with Alzheimer’s.

She moved close to us shortly after Dad died. She has been a part of our life for 20 years now.

Liv: Oh, that’s hard. Alzheimer’s is so tough to cope with.

Jill: Many of us do though, right? And she’s still full of love. That’s the most important thing. She’s full of love, so it’s very easy to be patient with her when she has so much love to express and give.

Liv: I have so much respect for the fact that you work with your husband. I’m telling you, if my husband and I worked together well, one thing would have to give, and it would likely be the marriage!

Jill: Well, it’s not easy. That’s true. It’s not easy. I’m not sure I would recommend it to everyone. It’s right for us. It works well, and I feel incredibly blessed. I’ve just told him recently; I have to say the appreciation that’s in my mind more often.  So often in my head, I’ll say, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you did that. That’s awesome. So, my new habit is to say it out loud when I’m thinking it or text it when I’m thinking it.

Liv: I like that. So, tell me about how you came to write your book, A Dose of Inspiration.

Jill: Yeah. Thanks for asking. So, it was a couple of years ago and we have been running this journey. We call it the power of purpose journey. In this journey, people go through a workshop and then they have a one-on-one interview to help identify their why, and how their personal purpose connects to their organisational purpose, and it’s just fantastic.

Then we come back together and we share these stories, and so often in these group shares, there’s tears, there’s joy. It’s amazing. And then people say, oh my gosh, I never knew that I’ve worked with you for 20 years, and I never knew that to their teammate. And so, I would leave these calls and go into the kitchen and share with my family, “Oh my gosh, you won’t believe this story, and I’m so inspired by this person.” And then I thought, well, this is so silly that it’s just ending at my dining room table. Right? Yes, it was their group. They got to be inspired by it, but it should go further. I thought and I thought about how it’s so tough sometimes to stay focused on your purpose. And we’ve been through a lot and our industry goes through a lot of misgivings and lack of trust, and people have to take a lot – when they go to Cocktail parties or meet people on the street. I thought we needed to empower ourselves. And it starts with each person. So, I thought, well, I want to get these stories out there more broadly. So that was the idea to create ‘A Dose of Inspiration, 100 Purpose Stories of Pharma Leaders.’ And I didn’t want it to be just the few companies that I worked with. I wanted it to be a big variety. So, then I started asking people to recommend someone. I’ve been meeting these wonderful people around the world.  Different companies, different roles, different countries. So, we get a nice cross-section of people. With different types of stories and different origin-purpose stories, everyone could see themselves in there.

I’m super excited. The book is at the designer now, so we’re aiming to have it as a holiday present. Coming out before the holidays, and a breath of fresh air going into the new year is the goal.

Liv: Perfect timing.

Jill: And it’s going to be free. All a hundred people donated their time, and we donated our time, so we’re hoping it’ll spread. It’ll be an eBook so people can register and get their copy of it easily. And there are no catches there. Just enjoy it and pass it on. That’s the goal. Spread the purpose. That’s how I feel about it. We want to spread the purpose.

Liv: I think that’s awesome. And I’m dying for the book to come out. We talk a lot about purpose in pharma today. I think I think it’s easier for people in rare diseases, perhaps on the front line…

When I first joined the industry, I didn’t feel close to the good, I didn’t feel that. I was working for a company where it was another ‘me-too’ drug in a saturated market. I only got into pharma because it was a way to earn a decent living and have a nice car… It was only about 10 years into my career after having my son Harry, who sadly only lived for 14 months. He had way too much time in hospital, for a little boy, and too much pain in his life. And I think it was only after that after the dust had settled after losing him, and now doing these podcasts and speaking to women that have such a clear drive for the good they can do for patients. Then I saw the potential we have to make a difference. That’s exactly what your book and your workshops pull out of people: Why do you choose to do this? Because we are not selling windows… I’m looking forward to reading and being inspired by those people in leadership roles in the more difficult markets where it doesn’t feel so easily attainable.

Jill: Exactly. Because it doesn’t just have to be rare. Before we get into that, I, just want to thank you for sharing. Your story is so real. My story is similar to yours in that my friend was a rep and she had this great car and they were talking about putting phones in the cars back then. Now you know my age! But if I had dug deeper then, and that’s what I encourage other people to do, I would’ve realized there was more to it. And you said you went, a long time with it just being about the remuneration, which is great. Remuneration is important!

And, and thank you for sharing about, Harry, bless his soul.  That obviously changed your life and how you see things, and I just love how you’re creating purpose out of pain, as I see so many do.

It’s a beautiful way of, honouring him and the pain that he went through for you to help other people in this wonderful industry reconnect with why they do what they do. And then I want to address, the issue about, maybe it’s easier to do in rare, in oncology or whatever, and the me too thing and all that. Because I believe everyone can connect to their purpose. You don’t have to change your job, maybe you have to change how you look at it, right? I tell the story in our workshop about a guy I met, and I bet everyone on this call has met someone like this, but this fellow was, Johnny Johnson. He was the shuttle bus driver at the Phoenix Airport.  He’s the guy that buses you to the terminal, so he does this loop, as you can imagine, dozens of times a day. So you think, well, there’s not a lot of purpose in that. Right? Talk about a ‘me too’ gig. but we got on that shuttle bus, and he was so positive and got on the loudspeaker and said what a privilege it was and an honour to serve such, inspirational people.

“Because you’re the ones who planned a trip and made it happen! And it’s my honour,  in my retirement to serve you.”

So I got off the bus and I said, “Johnny, I just love your energy. Where does that come from? How do you do it with all these grumbly people you have to deal with?” And he said, “Well, I came here from my home country, with a master’s degree, and I had to make a choice about how I was going to face my reality. He said, I made a choice that my job wasn’t just about moving people, it was about moving people. It was about making them smile. So he took it one, big step further. He wasn’t just moving bodies. He wanted to move people’s emotions. He wanted to make them smile. And I said, “Wow, Johnny, look at you. You go home with this beautiful smile and look at the smile on my face, and my daughters and my husband thank you.” And then I said, “I bet you make more tips than the other guys.” He said, “I do, I, I make about a hundred bucks a day.” And I said, “Well, what do the others make?”

He said, “40.” I said, “Okay. So you more than double your tips with this approach. Plus you go home happier.” He said, “Yeah, one day I brought home 500. It was my birthday!”

And I said, “Oh, Johnny, that’s awesome. “And then he said, and this was sort of the mic drop moment, He said, “But you know what? It has to come from here. And he put his hand on his heart. It has to be authentic. You have to really care.”

And that’s my whole workshop right there. Right? You have to care. And I say to people, if you are in pharma and you don’t care about people, you’re not going to do well or find meaning and purpose. And I think finding meaning and purpose helps you go home happier as well as do a better job at work, as well as create greater profitability for the organisation And there’s lots of evidence to support that. But, it starts with authentic caring for the people that you’re serving. Very few of us touch the patient, but the people you’re serving who then serve other people, who serve other people who serve patients, right? So caring all the way through is key.  And authentic caring for people, that’s actually where purpose comes from. That desire to contribute to something greater than yourself. That desire to serve, to give, that’s where purpose comes from.

So, on the issue of, can everyone? I believe everyone can. It doesn’t matter what your role is, what your level is, what your product is, or what your company is, you can choose to connect with why you’re doing this job.

Liv: And when you were doing the interviews for the book, did you find people rediscovered their purpose? Did their journey change during the process?

Jill: Yes. what we find is, 90% of people are not connected to their purpose. And I should also clarify, Liv, when I say purpose, there’s an intersection of three purposes that we’re talking about. There’s your organisational purpose, right? Daniel Pink calls that the capital P, and we’ve got that all over our websites, right? In some versions, to save and improve lives. And this has happened over the last decade. Every company has posted this up, right? But that’s not doing it as far as convincing the world that we are there to save and improve lives, right? So there’s that capital P, and then there’s your role purpose. How does what you do contribute to the organisational purpose? Daniel Pink calls that the small P and he says, that’s where we’re missing an opportunity. To connect what you are doing to the capital P. To what the organization is doing. That’s what we work on. There’s another P… I said, there are three circles and the magic is in the middle where they all intertwine. The other P is your personal purpose, and that one people usually have top of mind. Well, my purpose is those three beautiful girls and my husband and my mother, right? For you, and your family, that’s your personal purpose. For other people, it might be Faith is their number one, right? That is there. That’s a personal purpose. But the part that’s usually missing for 90% of people aren’t connected to is that role purpose.

One of the pillars of happiness is finding purpose at work. So don’t just ignore this because you can’t live your most fulfilled life until you find this purpose at work and you’re not going to be at your best, or the best employee either. So that role purpose, how your work connects to your personal purpose and your organisational purpose, that’s the piece that is missing for people. And that’s what we find. That’s why when we do the power of purpose, it’s a journey. It doesn’t just happen. It takes reflection, it takes talking, it takes sharing. And then through this journey, when they get it, people are like, oh my gosh, I’ve never thought of it that way before. Now for some people, it’s up top and they’ve done this reflection already. But for the vast majority, maybe when they got into the industry, there was a moment where they thought, “ Oh, I like the idea that I might help patients.” Or maybe it was the driving factor. because there are a lot of healthcare professionals in our industry who want to continue serving patients or maybe because of the bureaucracy, because of downsizing, or other rainy days, that flame has been reduced, and so, to either ignite that pilot light or fuel that flame is work. It takes effort and sometimes people don’t realise they need to put effort into that. The effort is worth it, of course. But people think it’ll just happen. Or somebody has just got that motivation gene! No. That person who you see who’s so purpose-driven, so motivated, they’re working on it. They’re doing things to make that happen, and it starts with connecting with your why.

Liv: I’ve got another question for you on this then, how easy is it for an individual to find a purpose if it isn’t easily enabled by the company culture?

Jill: Such a good one. I hear you. Yes, so there are many cultures that you’re dealing with at work, right? There’s the big organisational culture. Then there’s your team culture and then your immediate team, your department culture, and then your immediate team culture. And then there’s just you. So, at the very minimum, you can live your purpose. You can be purpose-driven. Some people say, my purpose flame is burning so brightly, how do I have it catch onto the people around me? What can you do to fuel your flame and help it catch onto them?

And that’s a big part, of what we do is work on that culture. And it’s lovely, admittedly, when it starts at the senior leadership, that’s the best when we do this with senior leadership and then say, they say, “Oh my gosh, I want to bring this to my team and so on. That’s the ideal. But if people are listening to this and they’re feeling frustrated, I, encourage you to start with you and who knows what kind of impact and influence you can have when people start going, “What’s she having? What’s she got? I want some of that.”

Jill: The hope is that it spreads. One of the challenges we face is people think it’s soft. And I propose that it’s essential, not soft. It’s not a soft skill, it’s an essential skill. And, they don’t have to just listen to me because the literature is abundant with the evidence that not only is this the right thing to do, to have people go home happier, which is a lovely outcome, but it’s also the best thing to create greater collaboration, greater innovation, greater creativity, greater retention, less sick days… the list of benefits of having a purpose-driven culture of purpose-driven people is tremendous. The evidence is dramatic on this.  There’s a great study, by Jim Stengel, who looked at the SME 500 companies and did a retrospective analysis of their growth over 10 years, and then he teased out of the top 500, the top 50 companies and these guys did significantly better than the other 450. He found a 400% greater return on investment. And he analysed what did those 50 do. And he summarised it to say, they focus on Purpose. And what he meant by purpose was the difference they make in the world. So as I was reading that, I thought, okay, there must be a ton of us there, right? Because we make a huge difference in the world! But we weren’t.

But I do believe that the 50 top pharma companies of the future will be the ones who figure out how to focus on their purpose, the difference they make in the world, because it’s right there, right? As you said in the beginning, we’re not making windows, we are making life-saving, life-enhancing, life-changing treatments. It’s right there for us to grasp.

Liv:   I talk a lot about the dark side of pharma versus the good. Where does this lack of trust come from and why do we do so badly in this space?

Jill: So many people tell me, when they came to industry from academia or came to industry from healthcare, their peers all said, oh, you’re going to, the dark side. Or other people talk about sitting on a plane beside someone saying, oh, how do you have such a low moral compass? I know you’re keeping the cure for cancer or propagating cancer so you can make more money…

There’s this issue of profitability and the right amount of profitability, not understanding the billions of dollars it takes to go into R and D in the general public.

People not understanding how the business works is one thing. Then there’s also something we need to take responsibility for, and that is that we made some mistakes, especially in the nineties.  Way back in the day, in the 1950s, we did well. Merck was Fortune magazine’s most admired company in the world. For seven years in a row, we were doing well. And then the 1990s happened, and with the nineties came, some ways, of working, based on some of the work by Milton Friedman and others that said, greed is good. For lack of a better word, straight from the movie, Wall Street, Greed is good. And that led to the thinking that, we saw what happened to the financial industry because of that and what happened to our industry.  

There were movies and books written about what we did wrong, and anyone who was there here in the nineties knows we made some mistakes. And we need to own up to that. We’ve corrected our wave since then, but we’re still climbing out of that, being transparent, for one thing, not buying our way, being focused on the patient. And that’s where the patient-centric movement started and there’s been so much good work since then. I just love our industry.

I love the people in our industry. I love the work that we do to improve the world. I’m so proud of our industry. My life’s work is to help increase that pride and knowledge of our industry because it’s not right. Like you said, it’s just not right. We do so much good work, but we’re not seen for that.

Liv: I wonder how much longer we’ll have to live in the darkness of the nineties.

Jill: Yeah. Well, we need more of this.

What I say to people when, when we’re teaching these groups, I say, it starts with you, right? Because to all the people that you touch in your life, you are pharma, right? So it starts with you. And I love empowering them with like a four-sentence version of their purpose story. So that the next cocktail party when they need to introduce themselves, and usually people say they try to get around it and avoid admitting they work for big pharma, I’m like, no! Stand tall, be proud. Say you work for pharma and why that’s meaningful to you. And that’s what will change things.

Liv: So tell me,  I know you’ve worked in this space for over 20 years, since creating the book, did anything change for you?

Jill: Well, it’s interesting because I’ve been capturing people’s purpose stories for many, many years. So, it wasn’t surprising the impact it had on people who did the interviews as well as, my hope, the impact on people who read them. But I do summarise in the book my key learnings and, and some of the myths that people have about connecting with purpose.

Not so many surprises, I guess, more reinforcement and even more passion for my purpose to spread this. I feel like my lifetime isn’t long enough to do the work that needs to be done… but my basic summaries of what I’ve learned is number one, pharma people are amazing, really great, motivated, smart, purpose-driven people. Number two, often that purpose has been slightly ‘wet down’, and they just need an opportunity to fuel that flame. And the magic that happens, the stories when I work with teams and they do apply this to the team, the magic that happens… Those are the great stories. And we have some of those in the book as well.

Triumphs of purpose.  That’s what is reinforcing for me, hearing those stories of when people do the work, that there’s the outcomes at the end.

So, yeah, I guess not many surprises, more just increasing my passion. Making my flame brighter, capturing these stories and trying to communicate them and this sense of urgency I feel to lift people, to help them realise that it’s within them to fuel this flame.

There’s some work to do, and maybe people need some help, but it’s there for all of us.

Liv: Yeah. I can’t wait to read it. I’m so excited.  Is it for anyone in the industry or outside the industry? What’s your ideal?

Jill: Yeah, the target audience is for anyone in the industry, every role. In life science companies, we use the word pharma, but that doesn’t just mean pharma. It could be biopharma, and medical devices as well.  If people outside our industry read it? Excellent!

It wasn’t written for them, but man, I hope it spreads to them too.  But I was doing it for us, for people like you and me who maybe thought, oh, it’s just a J.O.B, but there’s so much opportunity for more. Or people who thought I used to be connected to my purpose, but not anymore!

 Yeah, it’s okay. You too can refuel this purpose. It’s worth it.

It’s worth it for everyone. So yeah, that’s the target audience. People who feel like they need purpose, people who have purpose. It doesn’t matter where you are on that spectrum. This is for you to light the pilot light or fuel the inferno that you have.

And I do mean any role from a receptionist to CEO, there’s the Johnny Johnson story, but there’s also the famous story of the janitor at NASA. It’s a, it’s a famous story, but John F Kennedy visited NASA in the sixties when the whole world was focused on getting a man to the moon. And apparently, he approached a man with a broom, the janitor, and said, what do you do? And that guy stood up tall and proud and shook his hand and said, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon. I just love that.  He had connected the fact that if he hadn’t picked up the banana peel on the floor, Neil Armstrong might’ve slipped and history wouldn’t have been made. He chose to connect the dots. That’s why I’m encouraging everyone to connect the dots. So that’s why I also want to include many different roles in the book so people can see themselves. This isn’t just for senior leaders, this is for every role. Choose to connect the dots.

And yeah, there might be a lot of dots, and I get you, someone in almost every workshop says, well, I don’t touch the patient, so how can I be patient-centric? I think, ah ha, we have an opportunity here.

Liv: If I’d had the opportunity to go on a workshop like that, when I started in this industry back in 2003, 2004, I can only imagine the impact it would’ve had on me then.

Jill: Yeah. My story is similar to yours about the car and the nice phone etc, but if somebody had done this workshop with me, I would’ve connected to the meaning of my job about how my parents were both educators, so learning and education were super important to me, and Dad had a heart attack, so healthcare was really on my radar. And they were loving teachers, like really good teachers. So, they taught me about caring for other people.

So I went into my job as a rep in the nineties with this idea that I’m here to help educate the doctors, help them help patients, and that’s why I did so well. I didn’t connect that, that was my purpose right at the time. But I did that for myself and I sort of ignored what was going on in the industry around me, the golf and the concerts and blah, blah, blah. I just focused on helping the doctors help more patients, and that was why I did so well.

Liv: I remember being very dependent on motivation. So, I would come away from a conference or something feeling energized and I could see in myself when I needed something like that to reenergize me.  I think if I had had that clarity of purpose, I may have been less dependent on motivation.

Jill: Yeah. It fuels it from the inside because we can’t motivate someone. It has to come from within. So the purpose,  I keep using the fire analogy. That’s what I keep picturing it as. A pilot light that you need to fuel. And self-care is part of that. Fuelling your purpose.  As well as all the other things you need to do. The visual reminders, the monitoring of what you are thinking, monitoring your language. Changing your language. As simple as I wish we’d stop talking about our competitors. I’m talking about field people or even inside the organisation, but you can imagine a doctor hearing you talking about competitors?  That’s another patient treatment option. It’s not a competitor. Competitor puts you then as a salesperson or a company person, right? Even talking about my product versus their product. These are all patient treatment options. So that mindset changes your language and what you do, and that continues to fuel that motivation that I’m here to serve, I’m here to help, I’m here to make a difference. And that’s, that’s what we need.

Liv: So couple more questions for you. Your book,  we know who it’s for. We know it’s hopefully going to be out around Christmas time. How can people get it? I will add a link to this article and the show notes, but tell me more about how we can get it.

Jill: Oh for sure. So we put a page on our website, excellerate.ca And if you just press the button there, then you’ll go on the list to be the first to get it. And then yeah, pass that, spread that link to others as people wish. It’ll be a download.

Liv: And then on the topic of sharing books, what I want to know from you, Jill, is your best book recommendations, because I know you are well-read!

Jill: Oh my gosh, every book has an impact. I love books. I used to be very good at summarising every book I read, and the top three messages from it, and I need to get back to that because that’s when I learned the most.

My favourite book is always the most recent one I read. Maybe that’s just because I have a bad memory, I don’t know! I just finished Build the Life You Want by Arthur Brooks and Arthur Winfrey. Love that. Another one I just finished, is Everyday Dharma by Sunil Gupta. Eight essential practices for finding success and joy in everything you do.

Another really good one I just finished is The Invisible Leader. Spoiler alert: Purpose is the invisible leader! When people are driven by Purpose, they know what to do.

You have to read Drive by Daniel Pink and Leaders Eat Last and Purpose Economy, The Purpose Effect, there’s just so many good ones, but if people are interested in that book list I’m also very happy to share that.

For holiday enjoyment too the top 10 TED Talks and Brene Brown, I just watched Call to Courage again, in my working up the courage to ship out this book.

Build The Life You Want, Arthur Brooks has a low-cost course online, which is super cool, like $30 or something. I thought, what a great thing to do at the beginning of the year, right? As a kickoff to the new year?

Or the new week or the new month, whenever you’re reading, it doesn’t matter!

Liv:. So are you excited? You said nervous then. Let’s, let’s reframe that into excitement.

Jill: I love that. And that’s what I say to my daughters. Exactly. Nervous is the same feeling as excitement. So yes, excited. I’m very excited to get it out. so much. And, hopefully hear people’s stories and I’m hoping that this will spread more. I’m hoping that people say I want to nominate someone or I’m someone that I’d like to be in the book next because I’m already thinking we should do another one.

Liv:   That was my next question. Is there going to be another one? It could be an annual event!

Jill: Exactly. That’s what I think because this is just a hundred people. There are so many more. Who’s purpose-driven, and whose story is inspirational? Maybe it’s you, but, if you or someone else is, then reach out to me on LinkedIn or wherever, and, let’s get you in the next book!

Liv: I think that is our call to action from this podcast!

Jill: There you go.

Liv: Perfect. Well, it has been fabulous to have you. Thank you so much.

Jill: Thank you for sharing this conversation with other people. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for your purpose. Connecting with your why is going to change the world as well.

After our interview, Jill kindly sent me a whole list of her book recommendations and summaries, along with a video of her interview with Dan Pink. To access all of this and of course her incredible book, ‘ A Dose of Inspiration, 100 Purpose Stories of Pharma Leaders’ Click here!