Tune in to hear about the role of chance encounters and the positive impact mentorship can have.
Murray Ross had an incredible career, from starting at the Congressional Budget Office to becoming Vice President in Kaiser Permanente's national government relations team today. But a common thread throughout is his willingness to support and mentor others — and Amalia admits she wouldn’t be where she is today without him. Tune in to hear more about the role of chance encounters and what having the whole damn pie means to him. If you enjoy listening, be sure to follow us so you're the first to know when we add new episodes. While you're there, please leave us a review — we’d really appreciate it.
MP Murray Interview_SS_MASTERED_Mix01
Murray: [00:00:00] I tell people that, you know, if you want to progress in your career and you want to expand your horizons, it doesn't always have to be up, it can be out. You've got to be ready to be the dumbest person in the room periodically.
Amalia: Oh, I was great at that. Yeah.
Murray: Well, I mentioned, I mentioned you like, like Amalia.
Amalia: Welcome back to the whole damn pie. Today, I'm speaking with longtime mentor and friend, Dr. Murray Ross. Hi, Murray. How are you? Hello from sunny Seattle.
Murray: Yeah, we have sunny, hot, pleasant hills, 90 degrees outside.
Amalia: I started my communications career working for Murray at the Institute for Health Policy. And today, we dig into what it means to be a mentor.
Throughout the life of someone's career and how to be an advocate for women of color. Mentorship, real mentorship can be the key for unlocking the future for a young professional. Investing in other people's growth is the [00:01:00] kindest and most gratifying way to pay it forward. Helping others with the gift of your time and experience.
And the thing is, doesn't even have to be that time consuming. I know a lot of us think we're too busy, but I love how Murray has incorporated his awareness and care for others seamlessly into his day to day practice. We can learn a lot about how to have and eat the whole damn pie by looking into Murray's career and listening to his wisdom.
Through our conversation, I'm reminded just how much I've learned from Murray throughout the years and how much his advice shapes the way I lead my team today. But before we jump into all that, Murray tells us a little bit about his career now, with over two decades at the healthcare delivery system.
Kaiser Permanente.
Murray: I am a vice president in Kaiser Permanente's national government relations, um, team. And I also lead our [00:02:00] Institute for Health Policy, which is a small group of people, about seven or eight, um, depending, that Kaiser Permanente created to, to try and give the organization, um, a longer term voice in health policy.
We're a very different model of, of health care, and we think it should be organized in a more integrated and collaborative fashion and less sort of driven by volume and driven more by quality and health.
Amalia: Is it still the largest HMO in the world or in the country or whatever? Okay.
Murray: We're, we're actually similar in size, I guess, to the Veterans Administration.
We have a much more diverse set of membership, I'll just say that. And then so my job in one way or another since I came here in 2002 has been Basically, to explain Kaiser Permanente to the world in different ways, to explain sometimes the world to Kaiser Permanente, because we tend to, um, you know, [00:03:00] live in our own way of doing things.
And increasingly over the past few years, really to try and not just answer questions, but to make sure that the right questions are getting asked.
Amalia: Word, Murray, asking the right questions is the key to everything, and it's so central to the work that I do now. Looking back at this in 2002, I was a brand new mom.
I think I walked into an interview with Murray at this like high rise by the lake in Oakland, California, like maybe three months. After my daughter was born and looking back on it, I just feel so fortunate to have come across the opportunity, not only to have a paycheck, but little did I know at the time to have someone in my life that was going to be a mentor for a long time.
He really took a chance on me. I feel like at that time in my life, I was probably [00:04:00] the lowest of the low and just how I felt about myself and my prospects and knowing that, you know, I, I needed the job. And he, he had no reason to hire me, but he did. And that's how life works sometimes. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but Murray's early career was also built on
Murray: chance.
Murray: This is a story with a lot of coincidences. And it's one I often tell people who are trying to sort of plan their entire lives and careers is that there's a lot of stuff that happens by accident. You never know how it's going to go. So We will start with the original one, which is that I was actually born in Melbourne, Florida, and my mother was down there visiting her brother, who was an engineer, and I arrived.
So that gave me the option of U. S. citizenship much later in life. She went back. To where I grew up, which is Calgary, Alberta. And that is where I met the woman who is, um, still [00:05:00] my wife, um, many, many decades later, but when I met her, her father was in the oil industry and Alberta is sort of the Texas of Canada, but they were getting ready to move back to the United States.
Shortly after we started dating, she moved down to Arizona State University. And I went down to visit a couple of times, then decided I could just move here a lot cheaper than I can fly here all the time. And I did, and I switched. I had done two years at the University of Calgary, and then I switched to Arizona State University.
That actually led to sort of another, uh, fortuitous kind of moment. I met a professor who just sort of brought economics alive for me. She really turned me into an economics major. And then ASU had an exploratory course in environmental economics that I decided to take because I was interested in that sort of thing.
Amalia: Wait, what is environmental economics?
Murray: It's thinking about today, the big [00:06:00] environmental issue is climate change. Okay. Back then, it was air pollution. And everybody, they drive their cars, they run their factories, and nobody cares that they're polluting the air because it's, it's free to them. So economics is how do you address that?
Less pollution, and people pay more of the full cost of producing their cars or whatever they're having. So, the professor for that class was actually finishing up his PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park, and he persuaded me to go to College Park because it was one of the three schools in the country at the time that had an environmental economics program.
The other two, just in case you're wondering, were Harvard and the University of Wyoming. So, it was, so, you know.
Amalia: You could have went to Wyoming.
Murray: I, I, I gave it, I gave it some thought, but, um, yeah, that, that would have been a very different path. So. Yeah. So, we up and moved. to suburban Washington and Knox County.
When I was born as an adult, I'd never been east of Denver. So that was an [00:07:00] eye opener. So roll forward to, I'm finishing up my degree program and I'm about to take a job with the state of Maryland in their department of. I think it was economic development or something. By chance, a former Maryland professor who didn't get tenure and had gone to take a job with the Congressional Budget Office was on campus visiting and talking to my advisor's secretary.
And he basically said, you know, do you have anybody graduating anytime soon that we might be able to recruit? And she said, well, there's Murray Ross, but he's about to take a job. And the former professor said, tell him not to, we can get him in a real fast for an interview, and he can see what he thinks.
And by Friday of that week, they had me come down to CBO, uh, near Capitol Hill, and then they had a job offer to me by Tuesday. And, you know, so that was seven days elapsed time, and that's how I ended up at the Congressional Budget Office, knowing very little about [00:08:00] what they really did and their role and things, because I hadn't researched it.
It just came out of the blue, sounded interesting, figured the feds pay more than the state. Why not?
Amalia: I want to highlight the role of chance encounters so far. There was recently an op ed in the New York Times that talked about this and talked about how there are studies that show that when people can embrace uncertainty and unpredictability as a challenge rather than a threat, they're more likely to thrive in the long term and less likely to struggle with stress and anxiety.
So Murray takes this job at the CBO and spends nine formative years there, helping the Clinton administration try to pass revolutionary health care reform.
Murray: It was really interesting and satisfying. It was intellectually challenging. And it was valuable. You saw your work on the front page of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
And, you know, each of us had our own little bit to [00:09:00] play. And, boy, it's funny stuff. You forget about it until you start talking about it. So you have to stop me if I go wandering into, you know, rabbit holes. But my, my job was..
Amalia: Murray put in long hours through the ups and downs as the Clinton administration tried and failed to pass health care reform, and then pivoting to work with the Republicans after the GOP won control of the Congress under Newt Gingrich's leadership.
Murray: So I was, remember being up on the hill meeting with my new clients, the House Budget Committee, and NWOC's brand new Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, who you may have heard of, went on to become Governor of Ohio and presidential candidate, he looks over, he sees the CBO team, basically says, you guys are just a bunch of pointy headed idiots, and walks out.
And I'm thinking, oh, that's my new client. Oh, good.
Amalia: Oh, yay. This is going to be fun.
Murray: But, um, it was, it was really intense. After nine years of that [00:10:00] intensity, it was time for a change. I will just say, though, being in the room, getting asked your advice, CBO doesn't give advice, but you can ask questions that help people figure out what they really want to do and help them explain why what they're doing will or won't work or why it will or won't save money or cost money, just a fascinating place to be to learn about how health policy gets made.
Amalia: You may have heard the phrase, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. If you're at the table, you can. At least ask questions to help people see things differently, to challenge them, to consider other perspectives. I learned this early on from Murray, one of the first people to give me a real seat at the table.
How was that time for you? Because now you're at Kaiser. which has a lot of influence, right, because it's the biggest HMO in the country or whatever, but you have all this experience that you brought with you of being in Washington and knowing what it took to kind of get something like the Affordable Care Act [00:11:00] passed.
Murray: To do it during the Affordable Care Act would have been really cool because you're actually like seeing the needle move. I wonder how it felt for Marie after years of work on health policy with the CBO. To see the government finally find success under Obama with the landmark Affordable Care Act legislation.
Amalia: I was working for him prior to the Affordable Care Act, and it was driving me crazy that nothing was getting done. So the fact that he stuck out nine years of really no movement. You know, to be able to have a career that spanned just banging your head against the wall to try to pass this policy to finally seeing something happen in the needle move under Obama with the Affordable Care Act must have meant the world to him.
Murray: A couple of comments about the Affordable Care Act. I mean, one was, it was hard for me having been a professional in Washington, D. C. and having left for the private sector to see my old [00:12:00] friends and congressional clients actually. doing it. They were pulling it off. I mean, health reform legislation, I'm not, I'm not going to get the exact year right, but has been, had been introduced, um, by John Dingell from Michigan as the first bill every year in the Congress from going back to, I don't know, it was 1946 or something.
I mean, so we had just decades of wanting to do something and not doing it. And, and it was a, it was a big lift even in, um, 2010. It, it really changed one part of my job, which is, and I told my team this at the time, you know, we've all been saying for years, you need to do these different things as part of health reform.
Well, they checked all the boxes. So now it becomes a much more operational, much more granular thing to do. And, you know, it's great [00:13:00] to say things like, well, you know, you can keep, um, your adult children on your health insurance policy until they're 26. And everybody loves that. Well, it turns out that actually doing that is really hard.
Um, getting rid of co payments for preventive care services. Good idea? You actually still have to write all the programs and do everything to, to, um, see, see that it happens. So it was just interesting to, to watch that go forward. And then, you know, the, the program stumbled out of the gate, as big programs do.
And again, trying to figure out a way to both, you know, help our customers, our members, our employer customers, you know, understand that, you know, this is creating options for you that you didn't have. We've been through that with the Medicare Drug Benefit a few years earlier. It's like, we understand the law.
We will help you understand what your best choices are under the law. So, you know, that [00:14:00] isn't sort of policy per se, but it's leveraging knowledge of policy to inform the business and the operations.
Amalia: Yes, and the people, which is where it gets I come in. I mean, that is, that to me is the biggest challenge.
Like taking all of this complex technical writing, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, distilling it for somebody who has an eighth grade education, right? How do they, or whose first language is not English. How do you explain all these things? And sometimes I think there's a risk of oversimplifying it, but, but I always feel like there's like, Two or maybe even three pronged approach, right?
Like, there's like, get the attention, which is one strategy, and then educate, which is another strategy, and then help inform decisions, which is a full other. So for me, it's a three phase thing. Like you were saying, going into economics, it was not really planned for [00:15:00] you. And you're clearly, like, very good with numbers and economic y stuff.
But you're also, like, a really good people person. And I feel like those two things don't always go together.
Murray: They don't always go together. Although, I say, when I look at my economist friends who are out there teaching, there's a real diversity. Some of them are as warm and You know, just, they're just people.
Mm hmm. And, you know, I'm thinking of one who I won't name, but she teaches at Harvard. She's a highly respected professor there, and she answers every email. She's always happy to get together for lunch or breakfast when I'm out there. I think that's a really important part of it, because at the end of the day, you know, if you want people to do something, they need to trust you, they need to believe you, just sort of on the factual sense.
They need to trust you that you're not just scamming them or, or tricking them in some way. Because they experience that in a lot of other parts of their lives. Like every time you take your car in to get serviced, [00:16:00] right? Doesn't always need some mystery part that isn't mentioned in the owner's manual.
And you don't know. That's true in a lot of health care. And we can set aside the terrible things, you know, at Tuskegee and elsewhere. Right. Um. Tuskegee describes an experiment that was in the 1930s, but actually lasted into the 1970s, um, to let Black American men, uh, who'd been diagnosed with syphilis, just to let it go untreated, um, and watch what the natural course of the disease was.
And what's worse than that is that they were being given false treatments and being told they were being treated. Right. And it's just, it's, it's just appalling.
Amalia: It's disgusting. And I mean, you can find similar things in like Puerto Rico where doctors are going down there and just like You know, infecting, they're like human lab rats, right?
Like we'll just infect them with disease and see what happens. And [00:17:00] like, you know, Polynesia, all of, all of places where people don't have power.
Murray: And, and it happens on sort of, I hate to use the term smaller levels, but less dramatic levels of people of color who go in are turned away. You know, they, they're having.
Pain from the belly or, you know, chest pains or something and they're turned away and say, no, no, no, there's nothing wrong. Just go home. I mean, we saw this happening even with COVID that people had COVID symptoms. They get sent home and they died.
Amalia: And then you, I hear like the underlying racism of all the talking points now, it's like, well, it's people with pre existing conditions, or if they would have taken care of themselves better, then they wouldn't have died.
It's like, okay. It's all wrapped in there.
Murray: But just the routine things is people don't understand their health insurance. They don't understand what their doctors are telling them to [00:18:00] do often. They don't understand the medications they're taking. You know, we've seen this with vaccines, right? People I mean, there's, there's a whole spectrum of people.
Somebody used this analogy of, they're the people who line up outside the, the Apple store for the new iPhone. They were ready to get that vaccine on day one, because they were all done with the pandemic. There's another set of people who You know, who are just, eh, I'm not sure I understand this stuff and it seems like it happened real fast.
They don't have any legacy issues. They just, they're just cautious. There's, there's a whole set of, um, I don't know how many millions there are, but the, the legacy of Tuskegee and just the, I don't even know how to summarize it all, but
Amalia: All the terrible shit that, that drug companies and government and
Murray: Things have done to, and the medical profession and medical [00:19:00] every, everybody, um, has done to,
Amalia: yeah, the communities with the least amount of power.
Murray: I had a chance to interview Harriet Washington, um, who's written extensively and has written, I don't know how many books now. I've read three of them, and one of them was medical Apartheid and it was just a well-researched history of. Racism and health care. And what I tell people is, you know, if they're going to read that book, you have to understand first that Tuskegee wasn't the worst thing.
Amalia: Oh yeah. I know.
Amalia: I feel like I'm. informed. And every time I learn something new, and I'm like, oh, it's disgusting. Moving away from Tuskegee and racism in healthcare because we could spend a whole podcast just on that. I'm enjoying how Murray's mentors thus far are women.
Murray: I will throw two more people out.
My dissertation advisor was a woman. Yeah, it was. And my boss at CBO, her name is Linda [00:20:00] Bilheimer, and she's unfortunately, um, passed away several years ago. But she was really pushing inside the organization to move me into the budget division when there was an old school guy who didn't want me there. He said, well, he doesn't know anything about the budget.
And it's like, well, Yeah, but I, I'm a quick study, I can learn it. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I haven't sort of thought about it, but it is, I've really appreciated all that those people have done, you know, some sort of very actively and directly, some just by, Um, again, my Arizona State professor, it's just, she was just being a professor.
She wasn't doing anything particularly special for me, but nonetheless, she had sort of an outsized influence on me. And so, you know, I feel a certain amount of obligation to pay it back on the other side. I use the obligation only in a professional sense. I think people should be. teaching and mentoring the next [00:21:00] generation, but it's not an obligation because I actually like doing it.
There's nothing better than watching somebody who can. succeed. So if somebody cracks a door or gives them some advice or whatever, because they don't come from a lot of opportunity, or they just, they just don't know how to, where to go next. And actually just working with them.
Amalia: One of the biggest things Murray did for me was let me ask all the questions I wanted.
I never felt stupid. I never felt like I was bothering him. I had lots of questions because I really didn't understand why the country worked the way that it did. It's complicated and frustrating and having someone more senior take the time to see me and to guide me was really formative. I try to pay it forward now in my company.
I emphasize that everyone has a seat at the table. I want to hear everyone's opinion. I'm really intentional about it. I worked with Murray directly for about five years, but he's been a lifelong mentor [00:22:00] and a friend. He sits on my advisory board at my company today. But it's not just about me. He fills this role for so many other people.
And I always wonder, like, is there an overarching philosophy?
Murray: Well, one of the things is just showing up as yourself. Too many people, and particularly as they rise up the ladder, they start to behave the way they think an executive or a manager should behave. And where they got that impression of how that should be done, I don't know.
I only know who I am, and that's the only person I frankly, want to be. I don't want to sort of be an actor every day and go in and try and pretend I'm something I'm not. And I can mean some brutal honesty. I say this from experience. I tell people that, you know, if you want to progress in your career and you want to expand your horizons, it doesn't always have to be up.
It can be out. You know, you got to be ready to be the dumbest [00:23:00] person in the room periodically.
Amalia: Oh, I was great at that.
Murray: I mentioned you, like I'm always. yeah. No, but it's, I mean. I've had several jobs where I didn't know anything about the institutional details, right? Organizations are really good about coming up with ways to make processes, you know, and actually any kind of organization, whether it's a company or a profession or something else.
They try to make their work mysterious and what they do mysterious and they speak in codes and they come up with acronyms for everything. And I prefer to use very simple language. Just say it so people can understand it. Yeah,
Amalia: Murray, that's a power construct.
Murray: It's easier to get people to do either what you want them to do or what they should be doing if they understand what it is and why they're doing it.
[00:24:00] Yeah. And frankly, if they don't like it once they understand it, then, okay, well, maybe you need to be in another position here. I'm very candid with job applicants. And when I, when I was in government and I used to sit there when I was a Uh, the, the, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, you know, we, we put out reports and I had a big bookshelf with all these reports stacked up for over the years.
I said, this is what we do is we write these reports and we ship them up to the Congress. And if you don't see yourself writing these reports, you know. You're a smart person. You don't need to take this job if it doesn't seem right for you. I mean, yeah, we've all been in circumstances where it's, yeah, I do need to take the job.
Most people, as they progress a little bit farther on, um, they've been to college. Maybe they've got a graduate degree. They've got a few years of experience. They're going to be okay for the most part. And they should spend their time making sure they're landing in a place that's Doing what they want to do, as opposed to, no, no, no, I'm just here for the paycheck, just tell me what you want to do.
[00:25:00] So it's, it's, it's being honest about that. It's giving people room to make mistakes. I mean, again, I've worked with people who are just, they, they, they cannot tolerate failure. And that's just death of creativity. And it's death of growth, right? You gotta fail once in a while. You know, hopefully you can do it without a big face plant,
Amalia: Yeah, I hope that's not another one that you use me as an example.
Here's Amalia, she failed all the time. Well, I For me, that 10, 000 foot view is essential. It's something I began to understand about myself when I worked with Murray. If I don't understand how one task fits into a larger vision or purpose or goal and how what I was doing was adding value to the work. I struggled to complete the task.
I need my bigger questions answered.
Murray: I think that's a good observation. And I think also, you know, You think [00:26:00] about clients, who are the right clients for, you know, there's lots of clients out there. And if you, if you said, well, what I really want to do is just grow this ever bigger agency and maximize revenues.
Well, that's one path, right? Or you can say, well, you know, we, we need to make a living here, but we also want to be working on things that are meaningful and doing, doing the right thing. And that's an important piece of it.
Amalia: Totally. Well, yeah, I think even now I have to, that growth part you're talking about, you know, so I've learned that about myself.
I know I like the 10, 000 foot view in order to do my best work, but now it's. I have this system where I, and I actually might have gotten this from you too, where I think about, um, what am I, what I should be doing, what I could do, but someone else could actually do it better. And like what things I had no business doing, like balancing the [00:27:00] books or something like that, you know.
And I have these running lists going because it changes so fast as role within my company, and the company changes, everything changes so fast. So I have these running lists to help me not get stuck.
Murray: Well, and it's good to revisit those periodically. And just say, you know, I don't know, I probably do this maybe a little bit too often, but, um, what am I doing well?
What am I doing poorly? What do I like doing? What do I not like doing? Why am I doing some of these things? And so often you're doing it because that's the way you've always done it, as opposed to, well, you don't have to do it that way anymore.
Amalia: One thing Murray did that really impacted my career, and this may sound crazy, but he let me rewrite my job description.
I mean, who d does that. I hit a wall and Murray gave me the freedom to really think critically and [00:28:00] comprehensively about what I wanted to do within the context of the organization. What was I good at? What did I enjoy? And then how could I shape my job looking forward to maximize those things? It was such a valuable opportunity to have a hand in my own future.
I don't think many people get that experience.
Murray: Well, you were in a sort of unique position of working for a very small group inside an enormous organization. Enormous. Right? So, I don't know what we were then, um, we were over 200, 000 employees, um, we're probably around 250, now. You know, you're trying to find that, that right balance between having job descriptions that make sure, you know, they're non discriminatory, that they are treating people with different jobs, but sort of similarly, similar, um, [00:29:00] educational requirements and similar skill set requirements, um, you want to do that, but then within that, it's well, okay, but the way job descriptions get written, they get sort of total HREs, and it's like, well, this doesn't actually describe the job.
Say anything anymore, yeah. I mean, the job that we had in, and I don't know if it was your title or not, but, um, it's the one that we've used for the assistant in our office for a number of years, is operations specialist. And I would say at HR, you know, this is a, that's kind of ironic, because I'm looking for a generalist.
But you're asking me to advertise for a specialist, and that just seems like this makes no sense to me.
Amalia: Murray is always opening doors, always connecting people. I wondered what advice he has for those of us more senior in our career. How can we continue to bring people along with us?
Murray: I would encourage people to be on boards if they can.
There's a group in Washington, D. C. [00:30:00] called the Society for Health Policy Young Professionals. It's a networking group. They are really well organized. They're all people, sort of, first job out of working in health care or health policy. So if people like me, I think I'm a little, you know, a little bit far removed from their immediate next job, but just to be able to go and talk to them about, well, what was it like when, you know, how did you hear about stuff?
How did you find what you wanted to do? It's just fun. You don't have to be an expert in anything. Board services is a good thing to do to, to be able to give back and. You don't have to know the content area. Sometimes you just need to be a person who's willing to make a commitment to helping an organization move forward.
Amalia: Yeah, to show up. A lot of Murray's work touches conversations about equity and health. And I often feel that economic policies and equity and equality are diametrically opposed. Has he seen changes here? Is he seeing progress? [00:31:00]
Murray: Well, it depends on how you define progress. You know, there's been a whole branch of research that has looked into healthcare disparities over the years and how much of that is attributable to lacking health insurance coverage, how much of it is attributable to The You know, not having, um, access to health care providers and clinicians in, in their neighborhood.
How much of it is people, lower income people living in more polluted areas. Right. Food deserts, all of these things. And for years I have felt like, okay, we have documented this and we have documented this. And we found yet another health disparity. And it's like, okay, when do we pivot to solution time?
Right. And I do think in recent years, um, a number of foundations really started trying to move the needle a little bit on, um, obesity, for [00:32:00] example, because that's the root cause for diabetes, which is one of the most devastating, um, conditions that people can acquire. Right. But it's really complicated, right?
It's, it's, it's not just what you eat. It's how much you eat. It's what do they feed you at your neighborhood schools. It's, is there a, you know, a supermarket near your house? Does it carry fresh vegetables? Will you actually eat fresh vegetables if they're available? People have, you know, moved that, they've been moving the needle slowly.
But the pandemic, I, you know, I just think truly ripped the Band Aid off and exposed. inequities, we all kind of knew they were there, but now you can't not look. We started doing some work on the impact of structural racism in drug development. And you know, people don't like to hear that. And structural racism isn't calling you a [00:33:00] racist.
It's describing a system that is built on the legacy of slavery and discrimination and Jim Crow. Why is it when you get to a certain level in, in some clinical and research professions, all of a sudden you're left with old white men. Now, some of that's legacy that, you know, in the economics profession, when, when I entered graduate school, there were three women in the country who had tenure.
It has significantly changed, but you go to the American Economic Association meetings and they still, they're still pretty white. We can do better. We have to understand why things are the way they are. There's a consultant in Oakland, his name is Arnold Chandler, and he has this life course presentation that he gives.
And if you give him two hours, he'll give you two hours of the presentation. It's, it's very thorough research. And it's looking at the interrelationships of, um, [00:34:00] mass incarceration, um, you know, geographic and, and neighborhood segregation and broken schools and, you know, single parenthood and how this feeds from generation to generation.
And, you know, the first time he went through this, and I said this to him, so I'm not saying anything out of school, I said, you know, I think I already knew At some level, I knew each of these things you're describing. What I didn't have is the tapestry that you wove and said, look how they feed on each other to perpetuate each other.
Yes. And so the question then becomes, okay, how do we start to break these cycles and break these links? And it's not going to happen overnight, but it's not going to happen if we don't stay focused on it.
Amalia: Right, because it's by design.
Murray: Well, it was by design once upon a time, and now it's just on autopilot.
I mean, that's not to say there aren't still bad actors now, but [00:35:00] I, I don't think people, I didn't understand sort of, well, when, when we were looking at drug development, it's like, okay, you look at all the stages of drug development is what diseases do you research? Who are the researchers? Who's in the clinical trials?
At every stage, there's. There's a bias in there. Yeah. And it's not that anyone today is trying to do that. Right. But it's on autopilot.
Amalia: Well, I'm glad you're in there making that difference, Murray.
Murray: I do think one of the ingredients that's needed is, well, I'll be blunt about it, we need a little bit more engagement from people with my privileged positions to wade in and be serious about it, but also just to sustain the discussions and the movement forward and not let things just drift back to the status quo.
Amalia: Yes, because anybody who looks like me, we've, we could say this a gazillion million times and [00:36:00] You've probably been saying it, right? Like, I remember sitting in policy roundtable discussions with you, and I was like, You guys, the answer is non health savings accounts. Like, that's not the answer. That's the answer for you. That's not the answer for people like me.
Murray: That actually is a great example of something I opened with, and it's about getting people to ask the right questions. When they come up with these ideas, it's, well, what's the problem you're trying to solve? And then to be asking, well, okay, that's a problem, maybe.
But B, there's a much bigger one. You know, and we're trying to make sure now that as we think about pretty much everything we do, that we We bring in the equity implications of doing it. Now that doesn't automatically drive you in a certain direction. It is saying, you know, you may still choose to do what you were going to do anyways, but now you've, [00:37:00] you've at least thought about it.
Amalia: Yes, exactly. Okay, good. So glad to hear that. Okay, so Murray, this podcast is all about this notion of the whole damn pie, right? Which is, I think I spent a lot of my life thinking I had to choose one thing over another, and not actually realizing like, I didn't have to make so many trade-offs that I was worthy of having.
Global pie, right? So I want to know what the whole damn pie means to you.
Murray: Well, I thought about this and then I realized I've been, without calling it the whole damn pie, I've been thinking about this for years and years and years. And I think about it on two levels. And one is sort of just that, that work life balance level, right?
Mm hmm. I'm obviously dedicated to my work. I, you know, I don't put in the insane hours that I have, but sometimes I do. I also travel heavily, so [00:38:00] that's being away from home. I'm trying to juggle family, both obligations and just general family commitments.
Amalia: Um, I like I love that the obligations and the commitments are two
Murray: different things.
Well, yeah, I'm trying to say I'm trying to be a decent human being for my, for my family. I read a lot, and I spend a lot of time beating myself up for not doing all the things I want to do. So for me, the whole damn pie is partly about dialing my expectations back a little bit to how many hours there are in a day.
Because I like to do lots of different things, and they're sort of all my first priority, and, and that's, that's tough to pull off. But to the extent that I'm able to do things at the same time, which is why I go to Barcelona to run marathons, is you get to travel and do your running. And you get to read while you're on the airplane, and it's, you know, it's Self care,
Amalia: Murray, self care.
Murray: That's all it is. I'm good [00:39:00] with that. You know, on a slightly different level, I've been thinking about this more just in the job context. The physicians I work with, you know, they have this expression, today's things today. And they're so disciplined about not letting tasks carry over. And I look at my to do list, I look at those things that have been on the to do list since Christmas.
It's like, do them or get them out of your head. But don't torture yourself. So I guess part of the, for me, the whole damn pie is stop torturing yourself.
Amalia: Okay. Give yourself permission.
Murray: I can put anything into a running metaphor, but my philosophy when I was training for marathons was to run the fewest miles I could and still get trained up for the marathon because you can burn yourself out loading on the miles that by the time the marathon comes around, your body is exhausted. Yeah. And that's the trite phrase. It's not a sprint. It's a marathon. And that applies to a lot of the things we do. [00:40:00] We get caught up in the short run stuff and then we, as you said, you, you burn out and all of a sudden you, you just, you know, you break and then you got to do something to reset and it's, it's easier and cheaper if you just do that preventive maintenance along the way.
Amalia: Well, thank you for talking with me, Dr. Ross. Mr. Murray.
Murray: It has been a pleasure. Thank you.
Amalia: It was so good.
I can unequivocally say I would not be the leader I am today, be the business owner I am today, if I had not met Murray early in my career, he gave me. permission to ask for what I want and led me to thinking bigger for myself. I try to do this through my company today and I really cannot understate how important it is to have these lifelong mentors.
[00:41:00] Like, Murray was not just a boss. He's been a mentor. He's on my advisory board at my company. I trust his viewpoints. I trust his experience. He has a really unique experience that really have nothing to do with marketing and advertising communications, but make us a better company and make me a better leader.
He was at my wedding. And, you know, he has been a lifelong friend to me and I think we sometimes think of this term mentorship as being this short term action item to check off the list and it's really a long term commitment that benefits both the mentor and the mentee.