As I alluded to in my last post, I made a big change in May when I accepted a job with Abbott Laboratories and resigned from my job at Walgreens. After almost 10 years with Walgreens, it is both scary and exciting to start a new adventure. I had been looking for a new opportunity on and off for about a year, but was kind of in an "off" phase because of everything that happened this Spring. That's when things happen, I guess, because it was around that time that I got recruited from Abbott through LinkedIn for a job that sounded like it was made to order for me. It checked all the boxes for me:
- Close to home (closer than Walgreens even! Just up the road, an 8 minute commute.)
- Brand strategy role
- Promotion to Senior Director (was a Director at Walgreens)
- Large, successful company that I continuously hear great things about as far as culture and work/life balance
- Great pay and benefits
- Really awesome boss and team
- Global scope, but with not a lot of business travel
I actually had my first phone interview with Diane, my new boss, while I was in FL over Spring Break. Who would have thought that a couple months later I'd be telling my boss at Walgreens that I was leaving. I actually had a business trip in Las Vegas this week, so ended up telling him in person right there in the MGM Grand convention center hallway. He was very understanding and supportive of me, despite being disappointed that I was leaving. He asked if I could be persuaded to stay with a counter offer, but I said no. Time to move on, plus I don't think they could have afforded me! I had a great decade at Walgreens and got to do a ton of amazing things with some wonderful people. I'm grateful to them for all the opportunities and experiences they gave me. Now its time to get out of my comfort zone, learn a lot more about healthcare and global branding, and join the team at Abbott!
Abbott is a $20B healthcare company based here in Chicagoland, but with 94K employees in offices across more than 150 countries. They manufacture cardiovascular medical devices, diagnostics devices, pharmaceuticals and nutrition products (Similac, PediaSure, etc.) among other things. My new job is Senior Director of Corporate Brand Identity. In this role I oversee the Abbott corporate brand identity across the entire portfolio of the organization. This means that every division, every product, every marketing piece needs to appropriately reflect the Abbott brand strategy and visual identity. I will partner with the different divisions to make sure that the Abbott brand is showing up where it should be showing up and in the right way (you should see Abbott as the parent brand on your favorite Zone Perfect bar, for example, on the package, in the advertising, etc.). This is similar to what I was doing at Walgreens, but more focused in some ways. It is really neat because I will get to work with the regional teams across the world. I will get to learn about how the Abbott brand is applied in Shanghai and Sao Paolo, and what my colleagues in Mumbai are going to do after we hang up from a conference call. It won't be curing my wanderlust, that's for sure!
In any case, I don't start until June 5th, and putting in my two weeks at Walgreens has my last day there as May 17th. That means two weeks of playtime! Woohoo!
Here are some pics from this week:
