Tracy L. Arra

A big person in that life is my father. He's probably the one I go to the most for counsel. I always say he's my biggest fan and my biggest critic, and he's kept me grounded. The way he managed our familial situation with my mother and stayed by her side was so graceful and gracious. His love for her, and at the same time he remained an executive at an engineering company, working at ITT for his whole career. I think I get a lot of my loyalty and that perseverance from my dad. Even to this day, he's always giving advice, always mentoring, always teaching. He's just one that I constantly go to and bounce ideas off of, or if there's something at work that's going on that I could use an outside perspective and a fresh set of eyes, he's definitely one that I go to. I've also been fortunate within the industry to have folks both men and women in my sphere that I've been able to rely on, including Jeff Duchman who is now a CEO, and Bridget Bagnato who is the president of our specimen management business at BD. Bridget and I started together in that sales intern program, and she has about 26 or 27 years with the company. We have a friendship and I really look up to her in terms of her career and the way she operates within our space. Her career trajectory has been pretty impressive.

The best advice I got was from another woman that I really respected at my organization. I was skeptical about a role that I was potentially going to go for, and I didn't think I had the qualifications. That woman said to me, 'Do you know that a man would be about 30 or 40% qualified, and women wait to be like 90 to 100 percent qualified?' It was just one of those kind of step-back moments as a woman to say that I think we can be very hard on ourselves and want to check every single criteria and box there is. It always makes me pause when I think about a future role or when I'm mentoring someone. It's a piece of advice that always kind of comes to the forefront of my mind as something to be aware of. The second piece of advice is that life kind of comes down to skill and will. I think anyone can be taught skill, but unfortunately will comes from within. As a leader of people, it's really essential early on to kind of assess folks, and if someone's got great will, you can invest in them all day long and eventually they will get the skill. If it's reversed, it's very, very hard sometimes to turn that person around if you're ever dealing with some challenges when it comes to leading.

It's a wonderful industry that can really fill your cup, especially when it comes to purpose and to passion. Anyone that wants to support that patient, or maybe it's unfortunate that in this day and age so many of us are touched by some form of illness, whether it be cancer or heart disease or whatever it may be. I've really seen my company grow over the years through that purpose, which is to help all people live healthy lives. In med device in any way, I think that we have the unique opportunity of driving solutions that hopefully bring health and wellness, which I think then affords life and families and loved ones with the ability to be their best selves and to bring that to their families and to the universe. It provides a platform for really, really deep passion as well as purpose.

The challenge is getting women into engineering to do the research and development. I would love to see more of that. I still would love to see more women in upper management, like true executive leadership roles, even within the company and within the industry. I think there's still opportunity and we've got room to grow there as women. The opportunity would be that when given a voice, what I'm seeing is we've got seats at the table, folks are listening, we have a voice, and we just gotta make sure we come prepared and we've thought through things and we don't diminish our voice. We don't become quiet. Every Friday I sit in a room full of men on a weekly call with my executive team, all the sales leaders and our executive management. It's me and 12 men. In that situation it could be easy to become a wallflower and sink, but I've really tried to be aware of that and see the opportunity it presents. I have this platform and I have a voice and I am able to influence as well as direct big decisions. The challenge there is I wish there were more women within the team at that level on that call that I'm interacting with. I also believe that so many roles, are we going for those roles? Are women telling themselves we deserve this, we are capable, we're the right fit, and not shying away from it? The opportunity is to throw our names into circles and into rings where we may not have every single bit of the criteria, but that does not mean that we won't make a major, major impact.

The first I think is trust. I'm a big person on trust. Once broken, it's very, very hard to get back. So that goes along with honesty and perseverance. I've been in some tough familial situations. My mom unfortunately got ill when I was young. She had a lung tumor that metastasized to her brain 5 different times and basically shouldn't have survived, but she was probably one of the many women in my life that was a beacon of strength and perseverance. She made short-term goals when we were younger, whether it was to see me graduate and then my brother, and just these short-term goals, and she lived 21 years and really probably shouldn't have lived more than 2. Just her grit and determination are some characteristics that I try to emulate and to mirror. I'm always fighting through anything and I don't feel like any situation, no matter how dire or unfortunate, you know as her famous line is, 'this too shall pass.' I try to also incorporate that into my everyday. Those are just some of the things that are constantly my North Star.