Ep. 29: Powerhouse, with Siemens USA’s Barbara Humpton

04/28/20 • 23 min

Barbara Humpton

President and CEO, Siemens USA

“We often talk about Siemens as being a company that was built to serve society. And that mission really hasn't changed....We have real expertise in electrification, automation, and digitalization. And that's all coming into play right now as the nation wrestles with COVID-19.”

Hospitals. Factories. Data centers. Government facilities. If it’s an essential service or industry in this country, chances are Siemens USA is helping to power and maintain it. As president and CEO, Barbara Humpton has overseen major changes to how her 50,000 employees stay safe as they #KeepTheLightsOn for everyone else.

Throughout the pandemic, she has not lost sight of what is truly at stake: “We're going to find ways to accommodate, ways to adapt, but the really critical thing is to connect and care because I think the empathy we show one another right now is going to be the most important medicine we can offer.”

Barbara Humpton

President and CEO, Siemens USA

Previous Episode

Ep. 28: Triage, with Ray Dalio

Ray Dalio

Founder, Co-CIO and Co-Chairman, Bridgewater Associates

“A financial bomb has gone off. And then you have to say, okay, who are you going to help first?...Choices have to be made. The real question is whether we can do that together in a bipartisan way, in a skillful way, because there's enough money and credit to go around and this can be done.”

For master investor Ray Dalio, COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity to create greater fairness in our system. The founder of Bridgewater Associates—the largest hedge fund in the world—sees outright threats to the American Dream rising from wage disparities and environmental degradation.

Top among his preferred national reinvestments would be the great equalizer: “You want to enable as many people as possible to have equal opportunity [for] education. That's number one. And then establishing a minimum acceptable living standard and poverty level that they can't go below, particularly their children....I think we could do that.”

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Ep. 30: Values, with Kroger’s Rodney McMullen

Rodney McMullen

Chairman and CEO, The Kroger Co.

“We made the decision to share publicly all the work that we were doing internally in case it could be helpful....We're trying to pay it forward just like others paid it forward to us.”

When Rodney McMullen took a high school job bagging groceries at his local Kroger, he had no way to know he’d go on to lead the company—now one of America’s largest employers. Another surprise in his American Dream story: that his associates would one day be frontline heroes in a global pandemic.

And the company itself is playing a hero role. As so many businesses struggle and lay off workers, Kroger’s hiring 60,000 new employees. “A lot of those people...come out of the food-service industry, come out of working in small medical professions, or for veterinarians....People that are naturally inclined to serve others. So that's one of the things that's really helped us maintain our values.”