I get to be a coach and a mentor to up-and-coming new business Minds these are these are um MBA students they're so smart but they don't have as much experience and they don't know what it looks like outside of these four walls and so I get to talk about that in a in a coaching and mentoring way which I love and kind of expose them to a different perspective or something different to think about [Music] welcome back to Connected conversations this is going to be our season finale and I couldn't think of a better person to wrap up this season with at a real serendipitous time I guess is the word I would use for that and this person is somebody who I met oh five six years ago and over the years unbeknownst to this person I've learned from them by simply following them on LinkedIn and listening to what they put out there and really consuming their content and understanding you know things that I never knew before and she's an educator and she's a very she was a very powerful voice in the corporate real estate world and we'll get into all that because she has a very interesting story and I'm speaking of none other than Sam Fisher managing director business on the front lines Mendel Mendoza College of Business University of Notre Dame the fighting Irish Sam how are you I'm great I'm so glad to be on here with you Bob it's so awesome and yes the Fighting Irish it's an amazing opportunity and I can't wait to share more about how I ended up here I love it so again it's so funny that you end up at a universe adversity as an administrator because like I said and I told you in our prep call I learned a couple things from you over the years and let's just get that out of the way I learned what Equitable work meant and I learned what servant leadership meant I'd never heard those two terms until you use them um on LinkedIn and I also sat through a webinar or podcast that you did where you spoke about Equitable work and you in my opinion were the first person that I saw talking on these subjects so I can't think of a better person for those students to have structuring a curriculum for the for them nobody better than you because I think it's your heart you're an educator I love that you said that um it is I never thought I would end up here in higher ed and we can talk about how my story about how I how I got here but what I'll say is I really have a dream job I I had a career coach talk to me a lot around when we were young and when we started our careers we have this path right and and the path can be a little zigzaggy but it's still a path I have a social sciences background with my undergrad I recently finished my MBA I'm in business so I care a lot about economics and human behavior and things like that but so as humans we're not really wired necessarily to just have one thing or One path and I took a career coach talking to me about like what are the portfolio of things that you love what do you love to do and as I started to write those out some of them were really different and it was kind of an aha moment for me um in addition to a couple of other ones I've had in my life and so I really do have the best job like I'm not kidding I have the best job because I get to do what I'm really really great at which is operations so it's it's a mix of like a chief operating officer you know I'm managing administrative functions oversight of budgets all the things that a lot of people will say aren't sexy but I love um I get to be a coach and a mentor to up-and-coming new business Minds these are these are um MBA students they're so smart but they don't have as much experience and they don't know what it looks like outside of these four walls and so I get to talk about that in a in a coaching and mentoring way which I love and kind of expose them to a different perspective or something different to think about and then the last part which is actually my favorite part of my job is anyone out there who remembers what the strengths finder was right I'm going way back when you used to do like personalities or your yes strengths Finder right like I'm really way back on you Bob like I'm like 2006 the guidance counselors yeah yeah so my top strength and I will never forget this is I'm a learner like I love learning new things I love learning about new things when I was in corporate real estate I didn't really know about it then I had a big function in Tech I didn't know about it those were just things that I really enjoyed doing because I was learning and so I get to sit in on our classes I get to watch our students I get to help build the curriculum I get to sit in on any class at Notre Dame that I want to I can audit it I mean it's amazing so that part of me that doesn't always get fed in other Arenas of life feels really amazing and just fills my cup every single day well that's a perfect that's a perfect segue because we we now I think this is going to catch a lot of people up on where you are uh in your career right now why don't you take us back to your workplace days take us back as far as we could go all the way back to elementary school just take us through your background a little bit because I know you from I met you when you're at Capital One and then we intersected again when you're at Citadel and then OCTA you're at octave for a little while but take us through your your whole journey that that catches up to where you are today so my I'll just kind of do undergrad because that's probably the most relevant so um I was a pre-med major in undergrad when I started um and this will wrap a little bit around what I talk about because my uh grandfather was one of the first people in the United States to get chemotherapy he was a prostate cancer uh patient um he at the time was in the military and he was really a bit of a guinea pig they hadn't really done chemo he was at the National Institutes of Health and I remember being very moved by that and so I liked a lot of physical sciences human biology and when I went to college I was a pre-med major and I was a pre-med major for two years um and along the way I met my husband and decided I didn't want to spend X many years in school but I really wanted to stay closely connected to the Human Condition in whatever form and format that looked like so I ended up as a Communications and anthropology major the anthropology part was really the piece about the human condition that I that I care the most about and when I left school I went to work at retail so I spent seven years at circuit City's corporate headquarters in Richmond Virginia and it was such an amazing experience of like The Human Condition because you really learn about how do you design stores in a way that really aligns with the way a consumer shops right and it's based on demographics and it's based on socioeconomics and it's based on geography of where the store is at it's an amazing kind of um algebraic equation is the best way I can put it or maybe even calculus of all these different factors that play into how are you going to generate revenue and income and drive customer traffic in your store and that came to pass for me a lot longer many years later when I finished my MBA last year and I was understanding more economics it just made more sense to me but so I spent a lot of time in retail and I and I really felt like that really helped me when I made the transition into workplace because my focus was who's my customer right I spent many years thinking about who is my customer what drives them what's important to them what are the things that they care the most about and when I went into workplace that's really the lens that I use that's why you heard me talk a lot about Equitable work you heard me talk about servant leadership because many of those things are about that place of like who's my customer or who is the person I care about and how do I want to help them so that became a theme for me really throughout my entire career around when I looked at what I was doing and what I really wanted to do it was about helping people it could have been about helping them find the right space it could have been about helping them progress in their career it could have been about you know helping them think through a different career transition it could have been thinking about helping to make things more simple and less complex with technology so that became a real kind of underlying theme of everything I did in my career and it always was with the lens of a customer-centric lens when I left a Circuit City I was with them until the end and then I took a role with um actually with a a third party real estate firm so I worked for Newmark for a little while I was at Capital One and then I transitioned to become a Capital One employee and I had an amazing run there as well I worked for a really amazing boss we had an incredible team it was very familiar-like and Family Matters a lot to me it's one of my driving factors when I think about what I want to do and how I want to how I want to engage and I think about my team a lot like a family they don't always think about me like that but I do and so that was a place where I learned so much about who I am as a person and as a leader um and then also how to build relationships how to be a connector how to think about experiences for people in a different way than I think a lot of real estate people were thinking about at the time they really were focused on all right I'm going to build you a building I'm going to give you a shell and then we have an Interiors but they didn't really think about what I call the ecosystem of the workplace that's exactly how I started and so now you start to see the red thread of like I was a pre-med biology major everything in biology or in so in in human Sciences is about interwebs or you know interconnection and how did the things work together and so that's the way I thought a lot about a workplace right it's all interconnected and um you pull one lever you get one thing you pull a different level you love or you get something different and ultimately it's all about the experience that it turns into and so that's really what I did for probably the last you know since 2008. um and I had a pretty life transforming experience in 2000 seven I was um four months pregnant with my second son my other son was uh three I um I was with Circuit City until the end my husband and I were building a house and um you know they closed and so we couldn't afford it anymore and we really were making some trade-offs around what we were going to do and how we were going to go forward and my parents saved us my parents um bought our house for us that we were building we moved in and of course I'm six months plus pregnant I'm having a hard time finding a job and I in 2000 um and eight started working for Capital One with a third party partner um and then in um July of 2008 I was diagnosed with uh stage four Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and I was 31 I had a seven month old and a well three and a half year old so in terms of like how you readjust your life and think about things that are important to you that was such a game changer for me um I went through chemotherapy I then had to have a bone marrow transplant to help manage potential relapse um so for about two and a half years you know my life was in limbo it really was um I had a 10 centimeter Mass I had my spleen and my gallbladder removed it was huge for us as a family um and I couldn't have done it without my family my parents my husband even my kids pulling us through it your grandfather Yeah I mean even like you know without him like I don't know that I would have had a chemotherapy treatment so um we kind of came out the other side of that and it gave me a really new lease on life in a lot of ways not just um physically but mentally and spiritually and I just made a commitment that I you know would I would not shy away from things that scared me I would not be afraid of Taking Chances and that ultimately the things that fill my cup are about people and being part of people and organizations that care about people can I pause you there um because as you know the theme of this season is what is your why um I think I don't want to speak for you but was that your why was is I guess how does this at the time we'll do your why then and we'll do your why now in a little bit but what was your why back then what kept you going my why at the time was I had a seven month old that I had you know I'd never seen him walk I wasn't sure what was going to happen um I had a four-year-old that hadn't started in kindergarten um and honestly I have this little bit of grit in me I come from a blue collar background I'm a first um generation college graduate I'm I'm the only person in my entire family that has a master's degree and I did it when I was 45 like I just have a little bit of that grit in me and so I think part of it was I have my kids I have my family but also I'm gonna I'm gonna come out of this and I'm gonna be a different person I wanted to be a different person to my team that's really where the servant leadership came from to my partners to my family to my friends like I just wanted to be someone that people wanted to be around and that really just embraced life in a different way in a way that was fearless and that people could see somebody doing it that way my my church recently said something about living a questionable life and it's not questionable in like the bad way it's questionable and like wow you really just love life and you show up in a really different way than most everybody does and that was my why like I just wanted to be a different person when I came through that well you just said you had a little bit of grit I'd say you have a lot of bit of grip I don't know that's not a word but you know what I mean you have a whole lot of grit you have a whole there actually is a test um that I think West Point administers or they put their West Point to gauge how gritty a person was and I remember taking that test and thinking I I scored pretty well I'm thinking about other people that I could give this test to and be like I don't think they'd score so well but I think you would score very highly on on that that test so I just I I gotta say I mean that story is just your story is just unbelievable it's it's just standing the test of time and I've said this a couple times and I seem to stumble on these wonderful guests on the podcast where it's tough times don't last tough people last and you're definitely you're definitely the model of that so what about was there something about the workplace in particular that you were drawn to and that you wanted to help grow and evolve because I wrote down when you were talking about the physical space I wrote seeing beyond the physical space because when I was a space planner it was new construction it was everybody gets a desk a phone a computer a cuber an office that's all anybody ever cared about nobody looked at culture nobody looked in there was no neighborhooding there was no you know agile working models back then it was just this is what you get you're entitled to 120 square feet that's it we're not worried about the rest of it so was there anything in there that that you were drawn to in the workplace that made you feel like I got to make a change I got to make an impact here I I think so and it again I think it's because I look at it as an ecosystem right and I I look at everything as an ecosystem quite honestly Bob even what I'm doing now and every ecosystem has different players in the ecosystem and each player or each group of players has different needs and so I think when I was in the workplace roles that I was in that's that was what I was focused on is there is not a a one-size-fits-all and and I'm sure there's people that will you know hear things that I've said when I was talking about you know flexible work um I don't really talk about hybrid I don't talk about remote um because to me those they're still binary and to me humans are not binary creatures we're just not you know in some cases we might be the x's and the O's but for the most part we're not um and so to me the workplace was the best manifestation of you know a biological environment but in the in physical like for for people like for biological organisms that are interacting with not only their environment but with their people and understanding how that environment can affect how you interact with people your moods the the ability to generate new ideas the ability to um progress in your career like those things actually have those physical workplaces have a impact on that you know I've done tons of project management I've been a project manager you know construction project manager and those are amazing opportunities because you see something come to life that was probably on a piece of paper at one point in time but to be able to kind of draw yourself back from looking at a physical workplace and think about all the different facets of it and how it can connect people how it can help people um how it can drive new ideas how it can you know build people up it was really the thing that brought me to it I feel like and I I need to I don't mean to I don't mean to put you on the spot but I feel like in my network anyway in my little ecosystem on LinkedIn and the conference I feel like you were one of the earlier voices to talk about these kind of things like I said I learned some key terms from you years ago that people are using now um do you feel like you were early to the table on this or where did you learn all this two particles where did you learn and and do you feel like you were one of the earlier adopters of this thought process so I I don't know that I was one of the earlier adopters of this thought process I think I might have been one of the earlier spokespersons I'm not saying that people weren't already talking about it behind you know in their own organizations but I really was able to leverage and benefit so much by my own network and because I talked about it out like on LinkedIn and things like that I think people were interested in what I had to say I have many people come up to me after tons of conferences and they're like we're thinking about the same thing how do we do it so I think that's the other piece for me is again not necessarily the first thought person but maybe the first person that came out and was like hey here's how we're doing it not just the what the what is the what is almost ideological it's kind of your big picture brain Vision perspective of this is what I want it to be but how do you make it happen is a very different kind of um operation all right so I think I think I would agree with you just because the APAC region like Australia was way ahead of all this they were way ahead with the you know the agile working the neighborhooding concepts free addressing they were way ahead of it and you didn't hear about it unless somebody was out there talking about it to kind of bolster what you're saying yeah and I think honestly Bob some of that was driven by what I like to call behind or conversations in those organizations right it was driven by how much things cost and how much space was actually available like the whole flexible working in and of itself when it first started in real estate was not driven by employee experience I I don't care what anybody says I would debate them it was driven by um it was driven by how much does a cost per square foot driven by what's your head count forecasts look like driven by where your um your class a building structures were what was available to you based on your your Workforce strategy it wasn't driven by employee experience it it that happened by um almost by accident but I agree right it was great for people like me because that's the part that I care not that I didn't care about cost because I care about the cost there has to be balance but if you're only looking at it from a cost perspective you're missing a whole host of things that it does for employee experience and culture and mental health and things like that so to your point around I wasn't the first one talking about it I might have been early stage and just talking about it as relative to customer experience or employee experience um and where I learned it all honestly was retail like you can't you can't design a retail establishment because it is so costly if you're not generating Revenue right it's it's not like a workplace where your workplace there's very little workplaces in this entire world that generate revenue for the business they are an overhead they cost money and so in the retail environment if you put a store somewhere you have to generate enough income or enough Revenue to pay for the lease and everything else that goes along with the operations of that store look at how much brick and mortar we've seen go away circuits I used to love Circuit City disappeared yeah I mean it's all gone to e-commerce you don't have any overhead right so that's really where I learned to think about that balance between the cost drivers which are relevant and you can't ignore them if people ignore them or they don't talk about them they're again missing half the picture with the balance of employee experience and the ecosystem that's where I wanted to go you kind of jumped into my brain is that what the leaders today like really thoughtful leaders less about you know kind of the guys sitting their dollars and cents bottom line all that stuff the people who truly want to deliver a quality workplace experience they got to balance both they got to balance is this cost effective but at the same time is this building some type of culture um and providing an experience and at the same time providing equity learn that from you in the work isn't that like like they have that's a lot that's a lot to juggle it is for any for any leader in real estate and and the interesting part is it's not just real estate right it's also again we might have been an early adopter at Capital One was kind of building an integrated team between HR Real Estate and I.T right because those those three things are what employees experience the most when they're in a physical environment and so balancing the pieces that you talked about but also in concert building relationships and connections with those other like key um GNA functions are super important I talk about that a lot um and I'm not going to launch into any type of pitch or anything but I talk about that a lot and how I say it is let's remove the silos and all collaborate together to deliver world-class work experience to our end users who are ultimately our customers because I sat on that side where I had to I would get a phone call and say I don't like where my desk is can you come help me or um I need my computer in a certain direction because of the way the light hits it at three o'clock in the I used to have to do these things exactly yeah we all did yeah they were my customer and at the end of the day um it was a little bit of facilities it was a little bit of I.T you know I never worked on the HR side but of course HR is a part of it but I always talk about that it's almost like a platform-based delivery model meaning let's create a platform not talking about Technology's piece of the platform but let's create this platform where we all work in concert to deliver that experience so that's kind of that's kind of something I talk about it's kind of hard as a technologist and having a product to sell right but kind of my consultant side comes out when I when I start speaking that way but um I couldn't agree with you more so with all that said um now let's transition to where you are today so you've kind of bid farewell to the corporate real estate world for a little while um as we know with your long you win the title and the longest title the longest title well it's more higher ed people on your podcast and I might not have the longest title now we're just gonna keep it to you you know you're special you're special so with that said and I think I don't even really need to ask you but I do need for the sake of the podcast in our audience what's your why today why why higher ed why shaping you know shaping the future are Business Leaders again I I think I know the answer but I would love to hear your kind of take on what your why is today yeah so candidly part of my why was I was in Burnout like I just and I don't know that people will talk about it you know if you're a high performing and you are well respected you know people don't want to hear about that necessarily but I was I had been impacted twice since leaving Capital One um which was hard like that was just hard you know I was leaving for not I won't say I was never leaving for greener pastures I was leaving for an opportunity to have more impact which is what really drives me is about impact on people um in whatever shape and fashion that serves them and I was tired um like I was just really tired you know it's safe to say but and I I went through this in my personal life when you put yourself out there so much and you're investing in other people and other things so much it gets exhausting and you lose a little bit of yourself too I mean even if that's kind of what drives you I still think I still think you do and and honestly the conversation that's currently going on right now that's just like I feel like it's a it's a tension again between the US and them in the workplace right it's the we're gonna be here we're gonna be here for X number of days or all the time or no no we can't be there at all and that's that's a hard place for someone like myself because I I believe that there's flexibility I believe that it's not binary and so part of my Challenge and part of what was burning me out was honestly the constant um push and pull that I would see on LinkedIn or I would see in my um Pub you know publications of things that I read just this constant like fighting we have like this weird fighting culture going on now and not just in workplace but broadly I feel like about we fight about everything like our culture is about fighting instead of finding ways to move to better outcomes that serve us all and so um that was really challenging for me it's because it's just not it's not a place that my heart lives at and it's hard for me I still have great teammates that I keep in touch with you know I so I I didn't I didn't make a pivot for any reason other than it was a personal choice um and I again going back to my very early Beginnings I have a lot of veterans in my family and I care deeply about the commitment that they make and the sacrifices that their family makes to our country um and having come through some really complex medical challenges myself um I really worry about the medical situation for them you know and so my long-term plan whether I'm still in higher ed or whether I go back to corporate whatever that looks like is I want to I want to start a non-profit um and maybe I don't start it I've already been connected with a few people who already do it that really focuses on complex medical care for for military veterans um and so again going back to my earlier statement about like you can have a portfolio of things that you care the most about right and they don't all have to look the same you know I I have aspirations of renovating airbnbs like I have I have these different things that I want my life to be a part of now um and right now um being in a corporate environment just doesn't fit in that I'm not saying that that this is the end I'll never go back or that I won't go do something different you know when I went when I went for um grad school for business school like I wanted to come out and go be a CEO um the beauty of this job like I said earlier is I get to do all of those things and I get to be part of an amazing institution that has beautiful beautiful grounds I get to come into the office if I want to I don't have to um we have an amazing team like this right now is such an it it overflows my cup it doesn't just feel it it overflows it and this is just where I am in this place in my life and it's it took me a little while as the primary Breadwinner of our family and been the one that's been really like climbing the success ladder for the last 10 years to get to a place where I'm okay like this is good we're in a good spot and it's good for me and it's good for my family you just gave me the title of the episode I'm okay with Sam Fisher I'm writing that down and because what you you just gave me goosebumps um because I strive for getting to that place in my life and I might be there um to where I can say with confidence and with a smile on my face and with the enthusiasm that you just delivered I'm okay and I just I love how you just surmised that whole conversation by saying this is my journey these are the ups and downs this is where I was this is where I am and I'm okay and I I I really hope other people can get there especially in this climate right now you know where we see all these layoffs we saw the great resignation we went through the pandemic now now the layoffs are happening and companies are right sizing and doing what they're doing um I hope more people can use you as an example of I may not be okay now and I may be on a path that's a little different than I expected but I'm gonna be okay in the future and I just did a post about this on LinkedIn and it was very sincere and I had so many people respond to the post and tell their origin story much later I was shocked I simply asked for a city in a location where people started their careers and I got all these origin stories and it was perfect timing in regard to this podcast because Sam you have an amazing origin story and you know again you don't have a little bit of grit you got a whole lot of grit and to me you're an educator you're a teacher you're a strong voice in whatever that you do I think the people that you serve as a servant leader will benefit greatly from everything you've been through both personally and professionally and I mean that from the bottom of my heart that's an amazing story thanks Bob I appreciate the opportunity and the platform to share it you know it's um it's being super vulnerable and we talk a lot about that also in the corporate world and everywhere else um and part of it is is showing up how you talk right um there's a lot of people who will probably watch this that never known a lot of those things about me there's there are people that know the entire story but there's a lot of people that don't know it um so that's that's what I want so I'm gonna use this opportunity this is your opportunity to say goodbye to corporate real estate any final words to the corporate real estate world before we sign off here well I won't say goodbye okay I'll say um goodbye for now right um because I don't I I don't truly believe in goodbyes um I think again I'm not a binary person so I don't truly believe in goodbyes I believe and see you later or talk to you later um or we'll meet again right something like that and I still have a ton of friends and a ton of colleagues in that that Arena and I certainly don't want anyone to be like ah Sam's like walking away like I'm just choosing a different path for right now and maybe it'll lead me back to you and maybe it won't and I'm okay with that that's a perfect way you gave me goosebumps again um this I might actually change the title to we'll meet again with Sam Fincher I kind of I kind of got a little teary-eyed there um we're gonna end it right there uh ladies and gentlemen the wonderful Sam Fisher um who's now at Notre Dame and is saying her um we'll we'll meet again to the corporate real estate world I thank you so much for sharing this time with us today and um I wish you nothing but the best of luck and I really appreciate everything you shared with me over the years and what you shared with our audience today I'm Bob us chitty that's Sam Fisher this is connected conversations we'll see you next season foreign [Music]