Kathy Harvey:
A warm welcome to season two of The Application, the podcast series from Saïd Business School, featuring some of the extraordinary personalities who've been offered a place on the executive MBA here at Oxford University.
I'm Kathy Harvey. As Associate Dean, I've been involved with the people who've embarked on this journey for over half the 20 years since the programme was established. This is my chance to reconnect with them and to hear more about their struggles and their achievements, personal and professional, and to learn the leadership lessons we can all take from these inspiring alumni. We've got some great people lined up for you in this second series, so sit back and enjoy being part of their stories.

Thomas Bostick:
On the first day of combat, we had eight killed and 52 wounded, and it was just like a gut punch to leaders like me that had done everything we thought we could do to protect our soldiers.

Kathy Harvey:
I'm joined today by someone whose career in the US Armed Forces, and then in corporate life, places him among the small group of leaders who can say they have truly been tested through extraordinary times.
Lieutenant General, now retired, Tom Bostick served for 38 years in the US military from the former East German border to Iraq, Afghanistan and in the Pentagon. He's one of the most senior Black Americans to have served in the US Armed Forces. He led the Military Command Centre during the events of 9/11 carrying the nuclear codes for President Bush at that time. He was also the commanding general of the US Army Engineers Corps and led the recovery for President Obama as Hurricane Sandy swept across the East Coast of the United States. And he went on to become the Director of Human Resources for the whole of the US Army. As if this wasn't enough, he moved into corporate life after his service to become chief operating officer of a public company focusing on biotech. And there he led a major reorganisation. Now he sits on the boards of several start-ups and on the board of Fidelity Investments. Along the way, he took time to study for his Executive MBA. Graduating from Saïd Business School, he already had a doctorate before he came to Oxford.
So perhaps Tom, we'll start by asking you why after such an illustrious career, you decided despite having a PhD already, that you were going to apply to Oxford University to study business?

Thomas Bostick:
Well, Kathy, thank you for that kind introduction. It's great to be with you and back in Oxford, a place that has a special place in my heart and I really appreciate the opportunity to have been a student at the Executive MBA school. To the question of why, I was the chief operating officer of a publicly traded biotech company, and we had made the decision that we werefocusing on too many areas. We had a energy division, environment division, health, consumer products, and we decided we really need to narrow that down. So we decided to just focus on health. When that happened, the person that used to do the quarterly earnings calls decided to move on and the chief executive officer asked me if I could wear that hat as well. So at that time, I became president, chief operating officer in doing the work of the chief financial officer, which meant that I had to go to quarterly earnings calls.
And I really didn't know too much about finance at the time. So I went up to New York City where all of our MBAs were and they showed me models and balance sheets and all the financials about the company and then allowed me to talk about these things at the quarterly earnings goals. And I felt very uncomfortable doing that because I had no background, no education, and being an educator myself, having taught engineering at West Point, I've always believed that the foundational elements of what you learn in school will help springboard you into real life and how to execute. But I had none of those academic foundations. So I decided to look for an opportunity and landed at Oxford and I'm forever grateful.

Kathy Harvey:
But why Oxford? You could have stayed in the United States and studied there?

Thomas Bostick:
Great question. As you said, I'm a senior military officer and I've been invited to a number of different graduate schools to speak, whether it's Stanford, the MIT Sloan School, Columbia Business School, and other locations. And I remember being at the MIT Sloan School and asking how many people had military experience, and it was about 25%. And I was thinking as I was applying to business school myself, I would be in there with a bunch of young people that knew exactly who I was. And not that that would be bad, I just wanted to go to a place that was not filled with a lot of military, and especially people that knew me. Because sometimes it's uncomfortable if you're a young captain or major and you're there with a retired Lieutenant General. So I looked at overseas options and Oxford stood out really well, and I applied, interviewed with you Kathy, and then was successful in joining the team.

Kathy Harvey:
Well, perhaps we'll come back to that interview later in our conversation, but could you go back and talk a little bit about where you came from and your family life? Because you almost didn't end up in the military, even though you came from a military family. Can you tell us a little bit about your younger self?

Thomas Bostick:
Yes. My father is Black and he grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He was orphaned since he was eight years old. So he went from foster home to foster home and it was really hard on him. And then when he turned 17, he had the chance to join the army. And he was a runner, a long-distance runner, and almost he was at the Olympic level of running. So he ran all over the world for the Army. Ended up in Japan, met my mother, who's Japanese, and they married, they had five children. My oldest brother is an artist and I'm second as an engineer. My sister Kathy is a lawyer. And then my second-youngest brother Anthony is a veterinarian. And my youngest brother, Peter, is a cancer surgeon.

Kathy Harvey:
You've covered all the bases.

Thomas Bostick:
Except for finance. Except for business. We moved all over the world and ended up in Monterey, California. And if you've never been to Monterey, it's one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And I was working three jobs in order to help my parents get my brother, my oldest brother through college. And I decided I just couldn't do that for my siblings. And I started looking for scholarships and a good friend of mine had gone to West Point and I thought, well, maybe I'll try that or the Air Force Academy. And those were the only two schools I applied to because they were full scholarships.
And one of the things about the academy, the academies, is that you need a nomination from a congressman,- so a US congressman, a senator - and I applied to my local congressman and both of my senators and I was not approved. I did not receive a nomination. We had not lived in California long. I don't know if that was it, but all I know is I didn't receive one. And I had decided to go to the local community college, and that was free basically.
And a general came to my school. He was a retired general, one-star general. And he asked me if I wanted to go to West Point and I said, "Not anymore." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "I can't get a congressional nomination." And he said, "Well, you should write to the president." And I said, "Wait a minute. I just told you I can't get a congressional nomination. Why would the president nominate me?" And he said that the president has 100 nominations for children in the military. And since my dad was a soldier and I applied and I was able to get in. And I've forever been grateful to General Wall, retired general, and what he did for me and how it changed the trajectory of my life.

Kathy Harvey:
Well, I think otherwise you would've ended up studying carpentry at the community college. So we're all very grateful that you didn't. So you then went on to have a very varied and increasingly senior career in the military serving in lots of different places. What were the things that tested you most, do you think, as you approached some of the biggest challenges in that career?

Thomas Bostick:
I think at the extreme it's always going to be combat. And when you think about a leader's job is to train their men and women, equip them and then lead them, and to the greatest extent possible, to bring them home safely and uninjured. I was the number two person in the 1st Cavalry Division. And in the Army we have 10 divisions, and the 1st Cavalry Division is the most modern. It's a heavy combat tank division. And we had everything we needed in terms of equipment. We had wonderful leaders and we trained our soldiers over almost a two-year period before we deployed into Iraq in 2004.
And on the first day of combat, we had eight killed and 52 wounded, and it was just like a gut punch to leaders like me that had done everything we thought we could do to protect our soldiers. And we didn't know anything about IEDs, the improvised explosive devices, at the time. So we learned a lot, and to the nation's credit and the world's credit, we figured out how to build equipment that was safer, durable, could save soldiers lives, and to do it quickly, not the fifteen-year normal Pentagon acquisition cycle. But within a year or two, we had great equipment on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and it truly saved lives.

Kathy Harvey:
So that's something it sounds as though you feel personally very proud of?

Thomas Bostick:
I am, but you never forget the young soldiers. General Shinseki was the Chief of Staff of the Army, and I was his executive officer. And when a soldier died, General Shinseki made a commitment that he was going to go to the funeral and hand the flag to the next of kin. And he did this over and over and it got to be too much. And then he decided he would have the one-stars, two-stars, and three-stars. As long as you're wearing a star, you were general, you could take that flag and give it to the family. I've done 13 of those funerals, and I remember all of them, but one in particular, Ray Joseph Hutchinson. Ray Joseph was supposed to go home to the United States on the 6th of December, 2004.
And his grandparent, who he knew very well, she was having open heart surgery and they were going to send him home early. But in order for him to go home early, he had to bump one of his teammates. So he called his parents and said, "I'm not going to do that. I'll be home by Christmas. I'll see grandmother when she comes out of the hospital." He was killed the next day. And I went to that funeral and I met the Hutchinsons, Ray Joseph's mom, Deborah, and father, Michael. And he died on the 7th of December. I called them every year on that date, and on the 9th of February, which is his birthday, and other dates like Memorial Day when we're recognising those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. But a lot of times in war, and especially after war, the scars of war are still there, especially for families like the Hutchinsons and many others. And it's important for soldiers like me, and Americans, it's important to remember those families. And the sacrifices that they've made and the pain that they suffer never goes away.

Kathy Harvey:
You say that you always remember to make a note of contacting the family. And how much do you think those personal touches make a difference to your leadership practise?

Thomas Bostick:
I think it makes a tremendous difference because there's a great quote, "Your people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." And that's really true for the military. They're going to fight and perhaps die for their country. They really are not dying so much for their country, but for their team, for their fellow soldiers, and they're executing for a leader that they trust in. But having an empathetic spirit is an important part of leadership, whether in the military or in civilian world.

Kathy Harvey:
I think you were in the Pentagon when 9/11 happened. Tell us how that unfolded for you in your position at the time?

Thomas Bostick:
Well, I remember it very vividly. When there's a crisis in the military, especially at a high level, that crisis has to be reported somewhere. And the place that it's reported is the National Military Command Centre

Kathy Harvey:
That's in the Pentagon building itself.

Thomas Bostick:
That's in the Pentagon. Inside the Pentagon and right down the hallway from the Secretary of Defence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So the National Military Command Centre supports the National Military Command Authority, which is the Secretary of Defence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the President. So that National Command Authority has to make key decisions all the way up to the nuclear decision. And that's why the senior-most person, which was me, would have a chain around their neck. And that chain had a key that would open up a little safe that had the nuclear codes, and we would break the codes with the President and the aides holding the codes for the President. We'd break the codes and then the President could say, "Execute an intercontinental ballistic missile." That's never happened thankfully.

Kathy Harvey:
It's the stuff of movies, isn't it? It's what we read about, we've heard about, but to be the person actually in charge of that procedure, and not necessarily the decision, but the procedure and-

Thomas Bostick:
But the hard thing was we had 2,500 aircraft that flying and we had to help the air traffic control land those aircraft. And there was one point that President Bush was in a bunker and we could not talk to him. So we're talking to Vice President Cheney. We had two inbound aircraft from foreign countries that were coming into the United States, and all communications was cut out. And we received permission or direction and guidance from Vice President Cheney to shoot these two aircraft down. They were passenger aircraft, but we had no idea, just like the passenger aircraft that went into the towers or into the Pentagon, whether they had terrorists on them. So we finally were able to get hold of the President. He asked to try one other method of sending up some fighter jets and forcing them to land, and were able to do that and thankfully did not have to shoot our own missiles at civilian aircraft.

Kathy Harvey:
What was going through your mind when all this was happening?

Thomas Bostick:
It's an interesting question. It's almost like... I've been an athlete all my life and athletes train and train and train, and when it's time to execute, that's what you do. You don't think much about what's happening, you just execute based on how you've been trained. And in the National Military Command Centre, you have this one general or flag officer, admiral, and you have about 14 people that are working on your teams or operations, intel missile experts. And we rehearse every day a crisis that could be happening. And we're evaluating. People with clipboards come in and they evaluate how did they do, who did they call, how did they respond? How quickly did they take actions? So when 9/11 happened, we just went into execution mode.

Kathy Harvey:
You've had, I'm sure, many mentors in your career. And in the book you wrote, which you interestingly call Winning After Losing, you talk about one of your mentors as The Chief. And The Chief was very important to you, but you didn't name this person. Why was that person so important to you as a mentor?

Thomas Bostick:
When I arrived at West Point, one of the things they had arranged was you would have a sponsor, and the sponsor was a military couple, in this case, captains or majors that were teaching at West Point or serving at West Point, and you would go to their house on weekends. And my roommate was from Hawaii and his sponsor sponsored a lot of the kids from Hawaii. And my roommate said, "Hey, why don't you go to that house," his sponsor's house? So one day I went to his house. His name was Shinseki and General Shinseki and his wife Patty or some of the most gracious and best leaders I've ever met. So I knew them from when I was a cadet at West Point until I retired from the Army and we're still friends today. And he and Patty have taught me and so many others, wonderful lessons of leadership.
The one that stands out the most is he called me one day in the morning and there was an article every morning we would read, it was called The Early Bird. And The Early Bird was snippets of articles that were related to DOD, the Department of Defence. And one of them was about a Navy lieutenant ensign, and his name was Dan Johnson. And he said, "Tom, have you read the article on Dan Johnson?" I said, "Yes, sir, I have." And he goes, "Well, I'd like to go see him today." And I said, "Great, you can go see him this afternoon because you have to testify in front of Congress this morning at about 10:00 or 11:00." And he says, "Well, I want to see him this morning." And I said, "Sir, you really can't see him this morning. We have the final prep to get you ready to go defend the Army budget. And you can do that and then by noon you can be up and on your way. And I have a lot of people standing by to prep you." He says, "I'm going this morning."
And he said, "Call General Fred Franks and let him know that I would like him to go with me." Now the thing about General Franks and General Shinseki, they both served in Vietnam and they were both amputees. General Franks lost part of his leg, and General Shinseki lost part of his foot. They were both four-star generals in the United States Army. And the story behind Ensign Johnson, he was a brand new lieutenant on a boat that was being pulled by a tugboat out of a port in South Korea. And as the rope from the tug got tied up as it loosened, it wrapped around one of the sailors and everybody on the boat froze, everybody except Ensign Johnson. Ensign Johnson ran up to take that rope off of that sailor. That rope was going to a chalk about one foot, and it would've taken him through the chalk and split them in half.
Ensign Johnson got the rope off of him, but then the rope wrapped around Ensign Johnson's legs, and it took his legs through and he lost his legs. And he was arriving to Walter Reed that morning, and General Shinseki wanted to be there that morning to let him know he could still have a great career in the military. The top person in the Army decided it was him that should reach out because he had something that would be a bond, a special bond, and it was important. And it was more important than everything else he could have been doing, including going to Congress and testifying. But that's the kind of person he was and is. And Patty, his wife, is equally impressive.

Kathy Harvey:
So Walter Reed, of course, is a military hospital. That's a lovely story, and I can tell, when you tell that story, you still feel the emotion and you still feel the warmth about the person who motivated you. It's clear that you're such a people person and very thoughtful. You went on to become the head of all human resources for the US Army, which must have been an incredibly daunting task. And during that time, you were involved in some of the big changes in the Army, I think, to do with LGBTQ access to all kinds of army roles and changes in the way women were dealt within the Army. And of course, as a Black American, you will have encountered so many issues around race. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the things you are most proud of during that time. The things that really tested you in a very different role.

Thomas Bostick:
And maybe I should give some background. I was coming out of 15 months in Iraq. I was assigned as the Deputy Chief of Engineers in Washington, DC, my wife and I bought a house, and then she got a job as a principal. And it's really hard to get a job as a principal, especially in Fairfax County because they feel like you're going to be leaving every two or three years. But they figured I was near the end of my career and that she would be stable.
I was in that job for about 60 days and I received this phone call and they said that they would like me to move. And I said, "Oh, you have the wrong person. I just arrived here. I bought a house and my wife just got a job as a principal. I can't move." They said, "We know all of that, but we need you to move." I said, "Where do you need me to move to?" And they wanted me to move to Recruiting Command. And I said, "Where's recruiting command?" They said, "Kentucky." I said, "You're kidding me? I told you I just bought a house. My wife just received a wonderful job as a principal. I cannot move-"

Kathy Harvey:
You're still married? You're still married?

Thomas Bostick:
Yeah, still married. And I said, "I cannot move to Kentucky." He says, "We know all that. We need you there next week." And I said, "I don't know anything about recruiting." And I had earned a reputation some how of being a change agent and working through crises, and the Army had just failed the recruiting mission. And they thought, even though I'd never served in a personnel position, never served in Recruiting Command, and many other generals had that I could go out there and turn things around. They said, "Go out there, turn things around, and in 14, 15 months, we'll bring you back to DC." So I went out there as a geographical bachelor. I couldn't-

Kathy Harvey:
And you had an incentive to get the job done, right?

Thomas Bostick:
48 months later, they brought me home. And they said, "Okay, you understand recruiting." And they said, "We're going to make you the head of personnel." And I'm sitting here thinking, I'm a combat engineer. I'm going to run Army personnel with a million soldiers and 330,000 civilians? But that and recruiting were two of the hardest jobs I've ever had, but the most rewarding, to your point about what we were able to accomplish.
And my wife always says, Renee says, "It's a good thing you're not picking your jobs and assignments because you would not pick the things that you've been selected for, and they've all turned out to be really good for you." Well, "even in the G-1, we call that head of personnel, I was once asked to put a senior person on the commission that would look at Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And Don't Ask, Don't Tell is the law that requires gays and lesbians to not say anything about being gay or lesbian or show it in any way. So don't tell, that's the don't. And the don't ask is a leader could not see two people and guess that, hey, maybe they're gay and say... or you couldn't ask somebody if they were gay and lesbian, even if you saw signs of it, you couldn't ask.
And that was put in under the Clinton administration and General Powell was the chairman. They thought that was the right balance at the time. And I had a civilian deputy who was a three-star equivalent, Joe McDade, and I walked into Joe's office, I said, "Joe, I know you're really busy. We've got a lot going on. I'm going to hold down the fort as the head of personnel. I need you to go serve on this commission." And he saluted, "Roger, I'll go do it."

Kathy Harvey:
This was a commission to examine whether, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, should be scrapped?

Thomas Bostick:
Should be repealed, whether the law up should be repealed. And we had to report to the Secretary of Defence, Gates at the time, and President Obama to make a recommendation. And the four-star number two guy in the Army came to my office and said, "We need a senior person on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Commission. And I said, "sir, I sent my deputy there." He said, "We need a senior person that's in personnel that's a three-star, and that would be you." And it would've been a mistake, again, if I didn't do that because it was one of the most rewarding things I've done in my career. And it was one of the most challenging. I ended up on the front page of a major newspaper with a false allegation. I ended up getting investigated for that.
We all had to swear an oath that we would take no position regardless of your religious beliefs, regardless of what you thought about gays and lesbians, you would not take a position, you would only gather the facts. And this article had claimed that I said all sorts of things, that I had taken a position, said.... And it was obviously I was only senior military person of colour on the commission. So it was obviously an effort to try to say something negative about the commission. So I went under a three-month investigation, Mr. Honourable Jeh Johnson, who became the Homeland Security Secretary, he was the co-chair of the committee. And I asked him to let me go because I knew what was happening. He said, "No, you're going to stay. We're going to finish this investigation and I'm sure it's going to be okay." And it was. But years later, even to today, I will have a gay or lesbian person that will, in the uniform or outside, that will come up and just say thanks for doing that.

Kathy Harvey:
Well, very different from the very beginning of your career. You then went on to become chief operating officer and acting CEO of a big company, a public company. Some people who leave the military, regardless of their seniority, find it very difficult to go into what in the UK we call Civvy Street. How was it for you?

Thomas Bostick:
For me, it's just in life. A lot happens because of geography and intersections and chance meetings. And I received a phone call from a CEO of a biotech company, and he's a billionaire and very bright, very great friend today. And he got my number and he called me and he said, "I'd like you to come work for me." And I said, "What do you do?" And he said, "We build better DNA." And I said, "Oh, I build better dams. How am I supposed to help you build DNA?" And he chuckled, we both chuckled. I said, "Hey, I don't know anything about DNA." He goes, "Hey, listen, you know about the environment. I have these five sectors. One of them is the environment. I would like you to lead the environmental sector." I said, "But I don't know anything about DNA. I'm not a scientist." He said, "That's okay. You're an engineer. You know the federal government. Most of the money in the environment is with the federal government. We'd like you to join our team. Would you do it?"
So my wife and I flew and met with he and his wife, and we had dinner. I said, "I'd like to consider it. Think about it." So the next day his office calls and say, "Hey, we'd like you to do a project for us." And I said, "What's that?" "So well, we have these mosquitoes and we're making these mosquitoes." I said, "Stop. I don't know anything about mosquitoes. I can't help." He said, "No, no, the mosquitoes are made. We have a company called Oxitec, Oxford Insect Technology, but they genetically engineered the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which causes Zika, chikungunya, dengue and Yellow Fever. And they've released about a billion mosquitoes, suppressed about 94% of the wild mosquito.
So they had this factory in Brazil, and they asked me if I could go down, see the factory, and they said they'd been talking with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Fauci said, "'You can't scale a business like this.' And they would like the former chief of engineers to go down and tell us whether you can scale it." I said, "You mean can you build more factories and logistics and people and how much it's going to cost?" He said, "Can you do that?" And I said, "Sure, I can do that." He said, "Okay, can you leave tomorrow?" I laughed and I said, "I don't have a job, but I have a life. I'm not going anywhere tomorrow." And I went a week later, and I just fell in love with what biotech can do.

Kathy Harvey:
It sounds like there's not much difference really between military command and corporate command when the boss wants to tell you what to do. You've seen politicians, you see military leaders, you've seen corporate leaders. You are a corporate leader yourself. How much difference do you think there is between corporate, military and political leadership?

Thomas Bostick:
Leadership is leadership, but I think what drives those leaders is different fundamentally, in some cases. In the military, we're there to serve. We're there to serve our nation and serve our people, support our families. And you're not going to get rich in the military, so you're never really thinking from a financial perspective, that's never going to drive your decisions. When I moved to the corporate world, I found that's exactly what they use to drive your decisions. They want to motivate their executives to increase share price, to take care of their shareholders, to do the right things. Now, you still have great leaders that probably would do it without the incentivization, but because all companies incentivize their executives, it's something that was foreign to me that I didn't really didn't fully appreciate that till I was in the middle of it. And having to be responsible for deciding how to incentivize people throughout the company with stocks and bonuses and that sort of thing, it's just something you don't think about in the military.
And then in politics, it's really your constituents. So trying to serve your constituents, and they work incredibly hard, members of Congress, politicians, the hours working back and forth. But they have to answer to their constituents and sometimes that's difficult. And the thing that's been hard for me is they vote in blocks with their party, and there are not too many people that are in the centre. When I first came to Washington, 535 members of Congress, there are probably 200 in the centre that could be swayed one way or the other. Today that's like maybe 20, it's probably less, but everybody else is going to vote with their party. So that's a different type of leadership. So I think they're all three necessary and important, but it's what really drives them, I think, what motivates them as a leader that's different.

Kathy Harvey:
I'm interested really in what motivates you now. You've had such fascinating life, and not just interesting but important, I think for many people. When you applied for the Executive MBA at Oxford, you had to write your application and be interviewed. And in that application, you write essentially about your aspirations for your future and what you want to achieve. I want you to imagine that you are writing another application for the next phase of your life. What would you put in it?

Thomas Bostick:
Well, Oxford MBA, it was extremely helpful to me. These courses were all really good, and the academic underpinnings of them helped me defend positions and think about things from an academic point of view or know where to go for the resources. The other thing that was exciting about Oxford is the startup spirit. And that's where I'm at now. I'm not going to go back and work for a big corporation, or maybe even a startup, but I like the idea of startups, and I like the idea that you can take something, an idea, and turn it into something of value and of importance.
And then I like education. That's the other area for Renee and I, we mentor students at West Point, at George Washington University. I'm an affiliated scholar at Stanford, so I go out there from time to time. It's great to be back at Oxford. So the education piece, and I don't know if I'm writing an application or just trying to find a way to help and be part of the future. Because it gets back to how we started and General Wall and how I'm here today and have all of this background in my bio that you introduced me with because of people like him. And if I can do some of that at this stage of my career, that would be a wonderful way to approach this phase of life.

Kathy Harvey:
Tom, you talked about empathy earlier on in our conversation, and I think your empathy for others comes across so clearly in this conversation. And there's a phrase, why would anyone be led by you? Why would anyone want to be led by you? And I think it's clear to see why people would want to be led by you. So thank you so much for this conversation, and I look forward to seeing what happens next for Lieutenant General Tom Bostick.

Thomas Bostick:
Thank you, Kathy. It's been very wonderful. I appreciate it.

Kathy Harvey:
I'll be back with another episode of The Application, so do look out for it wherever you usually get your podcasts. If you'd like to know more about Saïd Business School, take a look at the Oxford Answers section on our website or check out the programme pages for more inspiring stories about our Executive MBA alumni. The Application is produced by Philippa Goodrich and Oxford Digital Media. I'm Kathy Harvey, Associate Dean at Saïd Business School. Thank you for listening.