- Recently, together with my colleague Mary Gamba, over on "Lessons in Leadership," we sat down and spoke with Carolyn Welsh, who's the President and CEO of New Jersey Sharing Network, our longtime partners, in fact, one of the underwriters of our programming, particularly around organ and tissue donation.

That's what the Sharing Network is all about, organ and tissue donation.

With Carolyn, we talked about developing leaders in a not-for-profit organization, raising money in these challenging times for a not-for-profit organization.

And as always, the importance of organ and tissue donation.

Hi everyone, and welcome to "Lessons and Leadership," Steve Adubato, my colleague, Mary Gamba.

We kick off the program, we are honored to be joined by our good friend, Carolyn Welsh, who is President and CEO of the New Jersey Sharing Network.

Good to see you, Carolyn.

- Hi, Steve, hi, Mary.

- So Carolyn, the Sharing Network is the official what in New Jersey as it relates to organ and tissue donation?

- So New Jersey Sharing Network is the Organ Procurement Organization designated for the majority of New Jersey to serve the constituents waiting for a lifesaving transplant.

Where are we today with the number of people waiting for an organ?

- So in New Jersey alone, there's approximately 4,000 people waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant.

- 4,000, go to the website, not the website, the hashtag, 'cause this just got my attention, donation needs diversity.

Of the 4,000, a disproportionate of them are Black or brown.

- Yes, so 67% of people waiting in New Jersey are people of color that need a lifesaving organ transplant.

- Carolyn, why are those numbers disproportionate to the population?

- So a lot of things go into, you know, disease process and what puts people in need of an organ transplant.

So some of that is definitely genetic and reasons why that there would be a disproportion.

- Hmm, and before Mary jumps in, I wanna bring this back to leadership.

So for you as a leader, and you know, we've talked about leadership a lot, but I'm curious about this, the biggest change, or improvement, if you will, on your part as a leader in the last couple years, you know, taking over Joe Roth's extraordinary job as the leader of the Sharing Network, succeeding Joe, for you in the last couple years, your biggest area of growth as a leader is?

- I think patience is probably something that's rough for me.

- We don't know anything about that, do we, Steve?

(all laughing) - That's how we get along, right?

So New Jersey, right?

It is just fast pace of life, everything we do is fast.

So I think an important role and change for me becoming President and CEO and leadership that I've really focused and worked on is patience and listening.

- Love it.

Mary, I'm not that good at either one of those.

Go ahead, Mary, jump in.

- Yeah, no, that's okay.

We're all a work in progress, that's for sure.

And as President and CEO, Carolyn, I would love to talk a little bit about developing your people.

Obviously you're a woman leader, you're developing women and men on your team.

Talk about your approach to developing people at the New Jersey Sharing Network.

- Sure, so I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary in March of being here.

So it's not new in that aspect, but coming into this role and leading the team and developing people, we really focused in the last 18 months, two years, to promote within, understanding our industry and understanding our state and understanding the people we serve is very important.

And I take pride in really knowing something personally about each person that works here.

We have over 200 employees, so it's not even just the leaders that I think that my focus is developed on.

Every person that does this work chooses this work, because it is sacrifice in your life to give up your own family time, personal time, to dedicate yourself to this work.

But developing people, not only in their work, but in their life, is very important to me.

I feel that developing them as people helps them to be able to do this work with passion and dedication and a sense of urgency.

- Quick follow up on that, Carolyn.

So if someone says, "Come on, business, leadership, "and business leadership in an not-for-profit organization," be it yours or ours, the Caucus Educational Corporation, or even what we're doing now, "Come on, it's not personal, it's just business."

You say what to that?

- Without curse words from New Jersey?

(all laughing) - This is why we love you.

I wanna have you on every single episode.

- We'll say, "BS, BS."

- It's BS, it's not true.

- Yeah.

We're in a different world right now.

And by looking at what motivates people, what energizes them, what refuels them, resilience is a big word that, you know, now in leadership that's coming out, and organ procurement organizations right now, going into 2024, we're sustaining changes to our regulatory measurements, which, listen, we all wanna save more people's lives, so if those components are gonna make us better, we're gonna do everything we can to do that.

But to be resilient, you have to know your people.

If you don't know them, you cannot help them when they need the help.

You have to recognize when they're off their game, and work, when they're off their game, people's lives are at stake.

So you have to kinda know what's going on with them personally, and just the world around us, you know, not to go into all of the different things around, but anything that's happening in our world affects the people that work here.

And, you know, what is their religion?

What their race?

What is their gender?

What are their belief systems?

What motivates them to wanna do this work?

I have a good memory, so I also can tell you that majority of the people, I was in their interviews and in the room with them, and I really try to do that connection.

It helps you when you're doing this lifesaving work to connect with people on a personal level.

So BS is the long-winded answer.

- Mary, you get one.

- I was gonna say, I have one other question.

- Yeah, jump back in.

- Yeah, I was gonna say one other question, because I do feel that there is then that link between that connection, but also trust.

And we're not just talking about trust on our team, but you're telling these families when you go in and one of their family members unfortunately is dealing with end of life, you need to get the trust of those family members if that family member hasn't already made that decision for them.

Talk about the importance of trust in the process.

- Yes, I think you hit it spot on.

One of our strategic anchors is obtaining the public trust and maintaining that.

And part of that is, you know, start with, who works here?

If we build trust there, they need to then go out and build trust with the community.

So we have community specialists, we have education professionals that are out in the field talking proactively about organ and tissue donation and building that trust in the medical community, and knowing at the time of someone's, you know, unfortunate passing, that this opportunity doesn't get asked to every person.

It's less than 1% of people that die in a hospital that will get asked if they would like to have their person be an organ donor.

We don't have the opportunity to get it right the next time.

So building trust has to be quick, it has to be genuine.

And if you're not genuine with your people here, how can I expect them to be genuine in the public when they're talking to people at, you know, the worst time that someone could be faced with a question?

- That's Carolyn Welsh, talk about a genuine leader who cares and makes a difference every day with her team at the New Jersey Sharing Network.

Our good friend, Carolyn Welsh, the Trustee of the Caucus Educational Corporation, our not-for-profit entity.

Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate it.

- Thank you for having me.

- You got it.

We'll be right back.

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