Leading From The C-Suite: Morgan Roth of Muscular Dystrophy Association On Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Suite Executive
An Interview With Doug Noll
Culture. A successful C-suite executive needs to have a culture that values thoughtful debate and constructive feedback, certainly from colleagues and also from a broad swath of its stakeholder community. If you don’t have this culture as a C-suite leader, it’s incumbent on you to create it. I’ve seen organizations with closed cultures evolve into echo chambers where ideas are conceived in a C-suite vacuum and launched without pressure testing. Predictably, those initiatives need to be recalled and retooled when they don’t meet the needs and expectations of the stakeholder. In our nonprofit world, that’s an unacceptable waste of precious resources and community confidence. Dialogue is so essential to optimizing ideas and showing your community that you’re paying attention.
As part of our series called “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Suite Executive” we had the pleasure of interviewing Morgan Roth, Chief Marketing Officer, Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Morgan Roth is the Chief Marketing Officer at the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). Prior to joining MDA, Morgan served as the Chief Communication Strategy Officer for the EveryLife Foundation for Rare Diseases. Before the EveryLife Foundation, Morgan worked for the ALS Association as Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications. Morgan is the former Chief Strategy Officer and Vice President of Strategic Communications for the Association of Foundation Professionals (AFP) and spent several years in the Middle East, leading global communications for the American University of Beirut (Lebanon) and The American University in Cairo (Egypt.) She has also been a communication advisor to the USAID Soma Umenye project in Kigali, Rwanda. Morgan is an alumna of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She currently lives in Washington, DC.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I began my career in broadcast journalism before I transitioned to the other side of the microphone, first in local government and then in nonprofits. I thrive in the ebb and flow of the social good community, where you can measure career impact by recalling the names and faces of people whose lives have been made better by your organizations.
In the latter part of my career, I have been focused in the rare and neuromuscular disease space. I consider my transition to this path to be less intentional and more a case of divine intervention. It was only when I started working in this space that I realized an issue I have dealt with since childhood is in fact, a rare, neuromuscular disease. Being here, among the bravest and most resilient community I know, has helped me come to terms with my disease. I now proudly carry the flag as an advocate for rare and neuromuscular disease issues from my position with the Muscular Dystrophy Association and also, as someone living with Charcot Marie-Tooth-Disease (CMT.)
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I had a spectacular failure early in my career. It was a case of being more focused on deadline than outcome and I overlooked a massively important detail. It was a very public mistake, covered by the media and undermined public confidence in my employer.
There were two outcomes of that terrible mistake that shaped the way I work today. First, I will never make a “forest through the trees” mistake again. More importantly was the reaction of my boss who addressed me with compassion. He declined my offer to resign and instead, trusted me to learn from the experience, to make amends, to rebound, and to move forward. He coached me to be humble, accountable and resilient. He didn’t have to do that. I try to pay forward his generosity at every opportunity.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
Look no further than Queen Bey:
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.”
-Beyonce Knowles
I’ve taken huge leaps of faith in my life, in my career and in raising my daughter as a single working mom. I trust my instincts, my capacity for situational awareness, and ability to adapt quickly. I try to approach my life from a place of “why not?”. I’m the lady who gave up her dream home in a cushy suburban neighborhood to move to the Middle East because it sounded like an incredible opportunity for growth as a global citizen. I can’t say that all my moves made me comfortable, but they always made me smarter, stronger, and better equipped for whatever came next. If I can assure myself to a 70 percent certainty that something is good and right, I’m going to move forward and figure out the other 30 percent as I go.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on your leadership style? Can you share a story or an example of that?
I can’t say that a particular book impacted my leadership style but Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last certainly validated my instincts to create cultures where people feel appreciated, safe, and inspired to contribute their very best to moving a nonprofit mission forward. Sometimes we forget what it’s like when we can bring our best selves to work every day and anticipate good things to happen. It’s incumbent on leaders to cultivate cultures that inspire that thinking among their teams.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
My organization, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, has the benefit of an iconic brand and more than 70 years of impact finding treatments for diseases, supporting a network of care nationwide, and so much more. These mostly genetic, neuromuscular diseases were long considered untreatable and incurable. Fortunately, MDA invested in areas of research that were considered to be folly decades ago. Can you imagine our world without MDA bringing the fields of neuromuscular and genetic medicine to the fore? Were it not for MDA, some of the neuromuscular diseases people live with today, like my own, would not even have names, let alone breakthrough treatments to extend life and independence. So reputationally, we’re on the map for our pioneering contributions to medicine and for helping generations of people with neuromuscular diseases live longer, stronger, and more independent lives.
Beyond our 73-year legacy of accelerating breakthroughs in treatments, advancing care, and advocating to empower our families, what makes us exceptional is the culture that supports our brand and reputation. We are an organization that challenges the status quo, moves quickly and assuredly when opportunities present, and has amassed so much expertise and influence in our sector. Recently, our President and CEO Donald S. Wood, Ph.D. was a guest of Vice President Harris and Transportation Secretary Buttigieg for a celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act and a roundtable discussion on a topic we’re very invested in: equitable access to air travel for people with disabilities requiring mobility accommodations.
We never rest on the laurels of the MDA of the 60s and 70s when the MDA Labor Day Telethon brought our brand into every living room in America as the nation’s first philanthropic crowdfunding and influencer marketing initiative. We are consistently evolving, assessing, refining, and taking calculated risks to make the most impact on research, policy, care and community-building. It’s the most exciting place I’ve ever worked. Our CEO mandates that his leadership team is visionary above all, but also, accessible, open-minded and data informed.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- Resilience. Careers are full of challenges, plot twists and personalities. Every single one of those has something to offer you in terms of building competence, courage, and capacity. Embrace the unexpected, do the hard things, and teach yourself to let go when you need to. Take it all in, process it, and come back swinging. There is always another chapter for you to write. I learned this after a disappointing experience with an employer, who eventually let me go. I was so deep into licking my wounds and feeling wronged that I almost missed a one-of-a-kind career opportunity that turned out to be so fulfilling for my mind, soul, and career trajectory.
- People-Centered Leadership. I once worked for a woman who wrote a book on work, life, and family balance. This was long before working-from-home was acceptable even as a temporary practice. She made it easy for me as a single parent of a young child by accommodating those inevitable gaps when my childcare provider was unavailable or when I had to race to pick up a sick kid from the nurse’s office when I was supposed to be presenting to our board of directors. She helped me make it work. More than that, she invested in me, offering me professional development, opportunities and my first vice president title. This is something else I am compelled to pay forward for working parents, staff who need time and space for their physical and mental wellness, and staff who need accommodations to be more present to deal with personal or family challenges.
- Synthesizing Power Dynamics. One of my mentors taught me about sizing up a room and finding where the power sits when I want to advance a concept. The powerbase does not always carry a big title, seniority, or tenure. She taught me to find that power in the room and speak to that person’s sensibilities. It’s a skill that has served me well. Good CEOs and Board leaders often look to advisors to guide decisions. You can certainly speak to the CEO and the board chair but it’s important to know who they trust and lean on for perspectives and validation of their decision-making. If you can win over that person with your plan or reporting, you’re ahead of the game.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?
As I advance in my career, I have more courage of my convictions, particularly around where my personal values intersect with my work. I have an aversion to cultures that tolerate their “brilliant jerks” and leaders who do not model integrity or accountability. I have been put in positions where I have had the choice to stay in a job where workplace culture ran counter to my values, or leave, even when I felt like the work I was doing was important and impactful. As a more tactical business-centric example, I would say that the same goes for partners we engage to support mission-advancing work. If a vendor or another kind of partner isn’t showing absolute respect for my organization’s mission and its resources, it is time to part ways. Changes in course always feel risky, even when they feel right.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Most of our readers — in fact, most people — think they have a pretty good idea of what a C-Suite executive does. But in just a few words can you explain what a C-Level executive does that is different from the responsibilities of other leaders?
A C-level leader has her area of subject matter expertise and leads that particular area of the enterprise, but from the perspective of overall organizational and mission success. We work with 360-degree business insights and objectives to make sure that the entire system is working seamlessly and productively. At the same time, we have to make certain that our particular piece of that system is calibrated to keep the system operational, predictive and aligned with the evolving needs of the community we serve.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a C-Suite executive? Can you explain what you mean?
MYTH 1: We think we know it all. C-suite leaders tend to know a little bit about a lot of things. We have broad subject matter expertise but rely on the specialty expertise and front-line insights of our teams to inform the decisions we make. Increasingly, we are seeking counsel not only from our senior team leads, but from more junior staff. We have a new generation in the workforce that thinks differently than their peers with more tenure. I’ve had some eye-opening experiences hearing takes on programs and messaging from junior newcomers to my team. They want to be architects of change and bring bold ways of thinking to the table.
MYTH 2: We think we are infallible. Like anyone, we make mistakes when we are distracted, not feeling well, or haven’t done our homework. Good leaders will acknowledge mistakes, own them and make amends when and where possible, particularly if our mistakes caused offense or hardship. It’s not a free ride in the C-suite. We have to be fully accountable.
MYTH 3: We sit in meetings all day. To some extent, the concentration of meetings is true because our work is about aligning operations to follow strategy and generate growth, revenue, and impact. But when we are not meeting, we’re analyzing data independently, looking critically at the landscape in our respective areas of responsibility, taking the temperatures of our team members and pursuing our own professional development. I have a lot of responsibilities that require alone time to process, frame or reflect.
What are the most common leadership mistakes you have seen C-Suite leaders make when they start leading a new team? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Leaders who leap before they listen set themselves up for mistakes. Yes, sometimes a leader has to step in to stem financial bleeding or to resolve a crisis; those are exceptions. But stepping in on Monday, reorganizing on Tuesday and altering program design on Wednesday is a recipe for failure. You need to listen to your team and to your colleagues to understand how the current situation or culture came to be. You need to understand from an enterprise standpoint what the aspirational situation or culture looks like, and how best to address that delta. My CEO bristles when new leaders come in saying they are going to “hit the ground running.” He insists on a culture of “hit the ground learning.” You need to be fully informed and very confident in your understanding of a team, its culture, and its operations before you start tinkering.
In your experience, which aspect of running a company tends to be most underestimated? Can you explain or give an example?
I am biased but brand equity and brand value tend to be the most underestimated aspects of business, especially across small and mid-sized nonprofits. A brand is a hard asset in an organization, and it needs to be cultivated like a living, breathing entity to stay relevant and relatable. Organizations that do not measure brand equity or pay attention to equity analytics risk losing brand value — the economic and psychological value a brand adds to a company’s products or services. An organization can’t allow its brand to rest on defining moments from yesteryear. Leaders have to constantly evolve the brand as a beacon for what’s relevant to your community right now.
If I had to give a second example, I would say time is undervalued as a business asset. This is part of the reason I’m extremely excited about the number of opportunities we have to integrate AI into our work in MarCom. My team leans heavily on AI to parse data and give us informed insights into our content development and management. In nonprofits, we don’t have the resources to trawl the ocean for the right fish to engage with our cause. We need to be really targeted in our approach to outreach and alignment with audiences. AI helps us find where “our fish” are swimming and what kind of stories about our work will compel them to jump onto our boat.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective C-Suite Executive”?
Culture. A successful C-suite executive needs to have a culture that values thoughtful debate and constructive feedback, certainly from colleagues and also from a broad swath of its stakeholder community. If you don’t have this culture as a C-suite leader, it’s incumbent on you to create it. I’ve seen organizations with closed cultures evolve into echo chambers where ideas are conceived in a C-suite vacuum and launched without pressure testing. Predictably, those initiatives need to be recalled and retooled when they don’t meet the needs and expectations of the stakeholder. In our nonprofit world, that’s an unacceptable waste of precious resources and community confidence. Dialogue is so essential to optimizing ideas and showing your community that you’re paying attention.
Vision. That’s an obvious one, but you also must have the will and the skill to communicate that vision in language that is clear, accessible to all of your stakeholders. If a leader cannot articulate an organization’s north star, its guiding principles and a cogent plan to get from Point A to Point B, it causes chaos within an organization.
Humility. Seniority and title do not make C-suite executives infallible or the smartest people in the room. An entitled and imperious C-suite is a dysfunctional C-suite. We must be equipped to take great ideas and constructive criticism regardless of the source and process it all with grace and gratitude.
Accountability. We model the behaviors, attitudes, courage, and mettle that we wish to see in staff across our organizations. We cannot hold trust intact with our teams when we are not self-aware, not brave, and not communicative.
Empathy. Yes, we are in the business of strategy, growth, and healthy bottom lines. But we are also in the business of people: our staff and the communities/constituencies we serve. This requires that we make room to pivot when doing the right thing for people we care about matters. Nothing engenders loyalty like making sure the people who fuel your business feel heard, seen and safe.
In your opinion, what are a few ways that executives can help to create a fantastic work culture? Can you share a story or an example?
One of the best ways to cultivate a culture of cross-functional collaboration, communication and mission-focus is by being vigilant against the threat of siloes. This could mean leadership siloes, departmental siloes, mission versus operations siloes, or interdepartmental siloes. As leaders, we fight siloes by modeling behaviors that prioritize access, inclusion, and communication, up, down and across our organizations. Closed doors and enabling staff who don’t consistently show willingness to commune over what’s best for the mission is the source of a lot of siloing.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My movement will be expanding a culture of philanthropy in our country. Philanthropy is a right and a privilege that does not exist in many parts of the world and yet, so many of us don’t exercise it. Think of how we could be a kinder, less polarized society by investing together in causes delivering equity, education, health, justice, safety, and peace. As Americans, we have the freedom to choose causes and to support them with time and money, no matter how modest or large our commitment. I’d like more Americans to understand that charitable contributions of any size can make a difference. If you can only afford an $X gift to a cause, give $X. Just give at least one gift a year. The feeling you get from making a difference in this world makes skipping your Big Brand latte a few times a week more than worthwhile, I promise.
How can our readers further follow you online?
X: @MorganR_DC
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/morganisonpoint
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
About the Interviewer: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA was born nearly blind, crippled with club feet, partially deaf, and left-handed. He overcame all of these obstacles to become a successful civil trial lawyer. In 2000, he abandoned his law practice to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, and trainer. He is a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. Doug teaches his innovative de-escalation skill that calms any angry person in 90 seconds or less. With Laurel Kaufer, Doug founded Prison of Peace in 2009. The Prison of Peace project trains life and long terms incarcerated people to be powerful peacemakers and mediators. He has been deeply moved by inmates who have learned and applied deep, empathic listening skills, leadership skills, and problem-solving skills to reduce violence in their prison communities. Their dedication to learning, improving, and serving their communities motivates him to expand the principles of Prison of Peace so that every human wanting to learn the skills of peace may do so. Doug’s awards include California Lawyer Magazine Lawyer of the Year, Best Lawyers in America Lawyer of the Year, Purpose Prize Fellow, International Academy of Mediators Syd Leezak Award of Excellence, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals Neutral of the Year. His four books have won a number of awards and commendations. Doug’s podcast, Listen With Leaders, is now accepting guests. Click on this link to learn more and apply.
