War Zone: Rescuing a Colleague: Kyle Bank

11/14/23 • 30 min

In early March 2022, the skies over Irpin, Ukraine, sizzled with Russian missiles and thundered with mortar shells. Under those skies in the first days of Russia’s aggression, the lead software developer for a Chicago-based startup huddled in his parent’s basement when the air raid sirens sounded.

For a substantial investment of thousands of dollars, the leadership at that startup—Phenix Real Time Solutions—could hire an extraction team to relocate their Ukrainian-based developer and his parents to relative safety in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

"It didn't take any convincing for our CEO or our founder,” said Kyle Bank, BSBA 2014, and the COO at Phenix. “It was, 'What's it going to take? How do we do it?' Same thing with our board of directors. Not one word of hesitation.”

It was a situation Bank never anticipated when he joined the video streaming company in 2016. Bank joined soon after Phenix found a Ukrainian software engineer through an outsourcing company and built an in-country development team around him.

That programmer's harrowing ordeal with his parents, who are in their 70s, started with a walk through a Russian checkpoint and across a makeshift bridge to replace the bombed-out span. They had to hurry to the Ukrainian-occupied part of Irpin, where they could catch a ride with volunteers to neighboring Kyiv. A day later, the extraction team—actually, a single driver employed by an organization that arranges such things—would collect the threesome and their belongings.

“The experience of getting out of Irpin to Kyiv was probably the most dangerous part of the story,” the programmer said as he described the ordeal, which included a 13-hour drive to Lviv through more checkpoints and around battle-damaged roads. Said Bank: "I was absolutely glued to the computer screen all day trying to find out if he'd made it. It was a nerve-wracking day."

The programmer was the focus of this particular episode. But it wasn’t the only thing Phenix did for its Ukraine-based team of developers in the early days following Russia’s aggression.

RELATED LINKS

Website for Phenix Real-Time Solutions
Kyle Bank on LinkedIn
Story on WashU Olin’s website about Bank’s story about the programmer
Vice News report from Irpin by Ben Solomon mentioning the Irpin Bridge
More about Kurt Dirks
"Leadership in Dangerous Situations," a book referenced by Dirks, to which he contributed

CREDITS

This podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:

Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistance
Jill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistance
Austin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineering
Hayden Molinarolo, original music and sound design
Mike Martin Media, editing
Sophia Passantino, social media
Lexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website support
Paula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

The programmer was the focus of this particular episode. But it wasn’t the only thing Phenix did for its Ukraine-based team of developers in the early days following Russia’s aggression.

RELATED LINKS

Website for Phenix Real-Time Solutions
Kyle Bank on LinkedIn
Story on WashU Olin’s website about Bank’s story about the programmer
Vice News report from Irpin by Ben Solomon mentioning the Irpin Bridge
More about Kurt Dirks
"Leadership in Dangerous Situations," a book referenced by Dirks, to which he contributed

CREDITS

This podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:

Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistance
Jill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistance
Austin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineering
Hayden Molinarolo, original music and sound design
Mike Martin Media, editing
Sophia Passantino, social media
Lexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website support
Paula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

Previous Episode

The Fateful Cab Ride: Christine Chang

Christine Chang recalls the moment in the back seat of a cab, heading across Manhattan to her next appointment. She and her cofounder, Sarah Lee, finally had to have a tough conversation about the future of their beauty business Glow Recipe.

The pair had originally built a successful business focused on curating Korean beauty products produced by other manufacturers. A business that had generated a significant customer following and an engaged fan base through savvy use of social media. A business that generated the majority of Glow Recipe's revenue, which was reported to be $1 million in their first year of business and growing triple digits year over year.

But the other 10% of their revenue was calling to them. That was the revenue that began to grow in 2017 after Glow Recipe started its own in-house brand of beauty products. And there Chang and Lee sat, in the back of a cab in early 2019.

“As a growing but small team, we were being pulled in multiple directions by having to manage a rapidly growing in-house brand and another business vertical together," Chang, BSBA 2004, recalled. “We talked seriously about whether this was sustainable. Five years from now, what will we wish we'd done? By the end of that cab ride, we had aligned.”

The curation business had to go. Glow Recipe would be all-in with its in-house brand of products. People would have to be let go. Inventory had to be shed. Their online community of fans and customers—invested in one version of Glow Recipe—would have to be invited along for a difficult transition.

Skincare brands are typically known to position their brands as either serious and clinically efficacious or whimsical and fun. Glow Recipe's mission was to combine both worlds into a line of products that delivered results but were also sensorial, joyful and approachable.

“It was a massive pivot to shut down the curated business,” Chang said. “As the brand grew, we realized we couldn't do both.” Two years later, the pivot paid off as Chang and Lee’s company continued an explosive growth trend.

RELATED LINKS

The Glow Recipe website
Elanor Williams’ page on the WashU Olin Business School site
Christine Chang’s Instagram page
Glow Recipe on Instagram
CNBC reports on the Glow Recipe story
A report by Katie Couric Media on Glow Recipe

CREDITS

This podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:

Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistance
Jill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistance
Hayden Molinarolo, original music and sound design
Mike Martin Media, editing
Sophia Passantino, social media
Lexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website support
Paula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

Special thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Next Episode

Better Together: Steve Degnan

In the wake of the global pandemic, some of the loudest voices in corporate America proclaimed the end of work as we know it. Lockdown, it seemed, had proven workers could be productive from home. Work-from-home came into vogue. We’d never have to commute to the office again, some suggested.

But as pandemic-era restrictions eased in mid-2021, Steve Degnan, then chief human resources officer for Nestlé Purina PetCare, joined other senior leaders and prepared to bring its workforce back. All of them. In-person.

“It was not without controversy,” Degnan, EMBA 2008, recalled. “It was our belief that better work happens when people are together. But we did lose people.” Indeed, about 30% of Purina’s workforce declared its dissatisfaction with the return-to-work policy, which launched in 2022. The company, for years a leader in worker satisfaction ratings on jobseekers website Glassdoor, saw its scores plummet in the wake of the decision.

Beyond their basic belief that employees work better together, Purina leaders had also just gone through a process to combat “big company diseases” such as lumbering decision-making and single-stream work processes. They’d fostered greater agility in their work teams, empowered team members to make decisions, coached effective collaboration.

“That work was being blown up,” he said. Degnan, now retired, recalled how senior leadership knew it would have to spend some of its cultural capital to implement a decision that many rank-and-file employees would support—but that a small and vocal group would not, including a large share of Generation Z and Millennial team members.

Why did Purina buck what seemed to be a trend in its approach to the workplace? How did it manage the communication of that requirement? What were leaders willing to sacrifice to make that decision—and what were they not willing to sacrifice?

RELATED LINKS

More about Steve Degnan
More about Andrew Knight
Bloomberg: “People Working in the Office Spend 25% More Time on Career Development” (paywall)
A version of the same story that’s not behind a paywall
Nestlé Purina PetCare
McKinsey & Company: “Americans are embracing flexible work—and they want more of it”
Business Insider: “Here's a list of major companies requiring employees to return to the office”
Nina Leigh Krueger: Her On Principle episode, “Out of the Box”

CREDITS

This podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:

Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistance
Jill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistance
Austin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineering
Hayden Molinarolo, original music and sound design
Mike Martin Media, editing
Sophia Passantino, social media
Lexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website support
Paula Crews, creative vision and strategic support