Hearts Afire

Welcome to Hearts Afire on the podcast for the team working every day at BioBridge Global to save and enhance lives through the healing power of human cells and tissue.
We're happy you're listening and thank you for everything you do.
And now here's the host of Hearts Afire, Adrienne Mendoza.
All right well welcome to the next episode of Hearts Afire, our podcast, and today my special guest is Emmanuel Casasola from Global Quality. So welcome, Emmanuel. How are you doing?
Thank you I'm doing good.
It's been it's been a fun time you know and I miss working with you directly but we still indirectly interact all the time, so I know it feels like sometimes we go through like a spell where we don't like interact or visit for weeks at a time and then suddenly like there's something that needs our attention and we work together.
But it's strange now that I don't see you as often, but it's kind of like riding a bike right we jump right into it and we're able to get onto it and then yeah we go another couple of weeks radio silence. And then we're back into it right?
That's what that's the beauty of like getting to know your workers and like developing a rapport and just trust and then you know you can just hop back into the conversation no matter what it is and everything's like normal again.
So but tell me where you're originally from?
Sure yeah I'm originally was born in Mexico City, so I only lived there for one year in that first year of life my dad immigrated to the U.S. So he was a dentist, but you know the economic um you know environment wasn't what it you know needed to be and so he was like let me take a chance so he immigrated to the U.S.
He spent a year here um you know getting everything set up and then he sent for my mom and me and my older brother and we were raised in San Antonio, so I consider myself a San Antonio native. I grew up in the north central side of town. I went to Robert E Lee High School here in town and went to the university and kind of worked here in San Antonio so yeah I'm I say I was born in Mexico but I'm also from San Antonio.
Not only was your dad a dentist but he was also a musician right? Like you've got your musical talents I think from at least him partly. Tell me more about that in terms of your musical affinity and your love of music and guitars.
Yeah I think culturally you know that Hispanic culture you know music is very much ingrained you know you know you we listen to music when we're sad we listen to music when we're happy and so growing up my dad was a Beatles fan, he was a Creedence Clearwater Revival fan, you know we listened to classic rock pretty much non-stop but we also listened to that traditional Mexican music, the you know the Boleros the trios stuff like that and so you know growing up very early I wanted to play the guitar.
My dad played the guitar for like 40 years so you know he was like yeah you know pick it up if you want to so I was 7, 8 years old when I started picking up the guitar and he taught me and I sounded terrible probably for about five years as any person who's picked up a guitar knows.
You sound terrible and you know you probably sound like you're plucking away at something that's not a guitar and can't ever make music but you just have to stick with it you you strum and you find time to to you know kind of hone your talents and yeah I've been playing guitar. And now my son who's 6 years old he really wants to learn how to play the guitar and so I bought him a little one a youth-sized guitar and I'm kind of teaching them the basics like OK, here's how you put your fingers, here's how you strum andit's pretty cool to see that you know because my dad taught me when I was little and now I'm gonna get to pass that on to my son.
So yeah it's been fun.
I love it you know I and that's something we I think share in common in terms of the love of music. I didn't play a lot of instruments. I did do trumpet and I never learned to play guitar, it's one of the things I actually probably want to you know take on at some point is learn the guitar because I'd love to be able to sing and do acoustic.
But I was you're a phenomenal singer I love this thing I don't know that people know that about you but you are a phenomenal singer.
Well it's fun when we have our karaoke sessions we've kind of gone do a karaoke you know you know at night or and it's been so much fun to kind of see that the talents we all have I love to sing. It’s kind of like ingrained in the family too. It's been passed down.
We used to sing in the cars all the time you know on road trips family road trips we would go back and forth from Oklahoma to California. Yeah we would belt it out in the car and some of those songs you know whenever I hear them just bring back those memories and that's why you like Route 66 right?
I do I love that song I'm into the old Jazz standards. I like the old country music. I have a lot of relatives who are musicians or you know artists in some way or another but it's it's a lot of fun and I think one time we took we toyed with the idea of creating a band here.
Yeah do you think we should still do that? I still think we should I know that and even David also has brought together some of the various musicians or tried to and for whatever reason either I don't know we we don't have the time I think COVID had gotten the way.
Last time they get in the way a lot of a lot of initiatives I think that we were trying to do but yeah you know I I think if anybody out there has the you know the desire just wanting to play together as musicians I'm all for it.
I think it would be great you know we'd find a space I'll offer up my office as a rehearsal space if we want to so yeah a lunchtime lunch band yeah. Be fun yeah Jam sessions.
So we know you're the executive director of Global Quality, but how do you explain what you do to people outside the organization?
Yeah you know that's an interesting thing right because people ask me oh you know where do you work I'm like oh BioBridge Global we run the local blood bank but we also have a lab and and now we're going into biomanufacturing which is totally cool and new and their eyes kind of glaze over sometimes.
And they're like oh quality OK, but if somebody asks me a little more what exactly do you do and then I start to get into like the the type of things that we contribute or support the organization with but I kind of came up with like the five C's right? Compliance obviously is fundamental. We're heavily regulated um you know the FDA but then also because we have international customers we have to follow those standards from all over you know the world and so compliance is kind of the first C.
But then we also have to think about the a customer experience right and what is it that our customers expect what are they requiring and how are we delivering upon that and can we really delight the customer right that that a big initiative from a couple of years ago are we delighting our customer.
And then the third C’s continuous Improvement right? We can't rest on our laurels, yay we got through an FDA inspection everything is great, there's always something that we can improve upon something that we can do better. And so that's the third C and then that kind of just starts to build upon what I call the culture of quality right and that everybody's bought in everybody understands that it's not just compliance you know there's other things that we have to to make sure that we're doing in a high quality fashion.
And then the last C is community, you know because we're hereto serve a mission the mission is very important to all of us and it impacts our community. I think we saw that recently with you know Uvalde at the end of May how impactful the work that we do and how important it is to so many people and so that community can't be something that we forget.
So that that's when when I start to get on my soapbox with people those are the things that I start to really you know kind of try to relay that that's what we do not only you know Global Quality but the organization itself.
I think that's a really good way of explaining it. I never thought of that myself and that just goes to show you you know when you when you you have a legacy you kind of build in terms of the department I I had I led Global Quality but I you always look to that person who's going to be able to step up and lead in a new way and reinvigorate and think about things in different ways. And that sort of sums up quality in a really good way.
I've never thought of that before and I think that really encapsulates everything.
Thank you yeah I know I you know I think about a lot of stuff in my downtime how can I simplify you know I think part of the the thing that trips people up sometimes just given in an environment where you're thinking about quality right they try to make things complicated and and you and I have always talked about that's the wrong C, right?
Yeah that's complicated it's the wrong C. Yeah I like that I didn't even think about that being a C but you and I have talked about how let's keep it simple it's path of least resistance right? We have to comply obviously to the different standards and regulation but that doesn't mean you have to do something too complicated or too you know something that's going to make make it easy to fail right.
Let's try to simplify it as much as possible and and serve our mission that's that's what we're here for.
Exactly so um how did you wind up in this field?
Yeah it's kind of a have you ever seen how some people shop and they they have that direct line through the aisles and it's really nice and orderly that was not me right. And you know I started in a laboratory very young I was 19 years old starting in what we call sample of accessioning, right, so sample receipts. I was receiving samples um you know this was my first you know real job I was still in college and about a year into that you know I always was very inquisitive I always wanted to know why are we doing things this way you know why do we do this?
And you know my my boss at the time, the lab manager, she was always like you know you ask a lot of really good questions you know. Have you ever thought about you know you know doing this you know full time? Like oh no no I wanted to be a teacher right I was like I don't want to do this. But as time went on and I found that I had an affinity for it and then you know one of our quality managers left and we were going through our ISO accreditation and you know there wasn't anybody to kind of gather all the things that we needed to do for compliance and I kind of volunteered.
I was just like hey I can do this and so um yeah I became the de facto quality Deputy at the up for that for that and I was 20 years old in my first audit andyeah I I we we were successful and you know we maintained accreditation with minimal findings. And we had a laboratory in Dallas that was going through accreditation they sent me up there and all of a sudden you know this career and quality started to be like a real thing right.
And I was working in the food industry as food testing so it's food safety and food microbiology, environmental sciences and stuff like that and so I was just kind of honing my skills in that environment it was another heavily regulated environment so we dealt with FDA USDA and various other standards bodies well I you know.
Fast forward that as I continue toyou know progress in that career and in different organizations I ended up working for a company that had a hundred locations spread across Canada, U.S. and Mexico and I was their director of quality.
So this is not like 10 to 12 years later right. I'm on the road a lotI'm making sure that they are complying to what they need to but then I'm also helping out customers inyou know some aspects Business Development so I was helping them you know with their sampling plans and testing plans and how they were going to comply to the regulators I was helping with acquisition of new laboratories and things like that.
I was just kind of doing a catch-all right I was just doing whatever I needed to for the organization and but I was on the road a lot and I was a new dad my son was born in2016. And that's hard you know it's hard to leave home and then my dad had his first heart attack and so I was like man I gotta stay home more I I really gotta you know do something different and I I graduated for from the University of the Incarnate Word.
I had you know all these years of experience and I was like I was looking for another job in the food you know in area food safety area but then I came across a job listing and it was for QualTex Laboratories as director of quality assurance and I read the job description like CAPAs, you know OK auditing OK continuous Improvement yeah I mean that's pretty much everything I do and then it's a laboratory.
And then I looked it up and I'm like oh blood and plasma I don't know if I can do this right and so I kind of had that self-check moment but I you know I was like now I'm gonna put it out there you know the worst thing that they could say is no right. And so then you know I put my resume together and polished it up and I got a call and they were like hey you know we know you're in a different industry but you do have a lot of experience it's relevant you were in a regulated environment and I was like oh yeah you know I interacted with the FDA on pretty much a monthly basis and stuff like that.
You know I started talking about everything that I did and then you and I interviewed together and we just hit it off I think very well. As far as I left going man I really want to work there um I really thought that you know the organization was really special blood banking, testing, all the stuff that that we're doing and so and I remember Ward asked me a question, Ward was it the COO at the time and he asked me a question in the interview and he goes you know how do you reconcile you know the fact that we're very different than what you're doing historically?
And I said well you have samples that need to be tested and you have results that need to go out to customers I mean that's pretty much what you're doing right and so it's just the sample Matrix is different and the testing technology might be a little bit different but samples go in the results go out you know and so I kind of just dumbed it down as much as I could and so that's how it ended up at QualTex Laboratories. And so yeah that that's how I ended up in this field.
I love it and you know you have a a slogan so to speak just like I have my slogan I say you know take the time it takes and it'll take less time it's not my own like I've just used it in my career for meeting so many different things but for you it's it's getting comfortable tell us what it is.
Yeah be comfortable being uncomfortable.
I love that and I told that to to the team a lot. In fact they all somebody told me that when they were leaving the organization they were like I took it I took a chance on this job I had to be comfortable being uncomfortable like oh no it backfired.
But I was really happy for that individual actually and she had a good opportunity but it's about you know true growth doesn't happen unless you're uncomfortable unless you're stretching yourself out and doing something that you didn't know you could do and so that's that's what that means. Being comfortable being uncomfortable is just you know how do you put yourself in those positions and when you're in uncomfortable positions like an FDA inspection or a client audit or an angry customer call that's an uncomfortable position you have to be OK dealing with that and then being calm enough to say OK this is what we're going to do this is how we're going to resolve it. This is how we're going to get the the supporting information for the regulator so that they're not screaming at us and stuff like that.
So it's just about personal growth and it's about being able to handle the situation as best as you can.
Yeah you know when you look back at your at your dad's story you know he's been a big been a big inspiration in your life, do you think about those challenges the the getting comfortable being uncomfortable does that resonate with you like on a personal level? And you're you're looking at your dad's path and his his challenges he met with?
Yeah definitely you know being an immigrant in the 80s probably wasn't very easy um and having to learn new language having to adapt to a new culture you know societal norms, being away from your family for a full year, you know all of those things.
I put myself in his position. I'm like I don't know that I could have done that right um but yeah it's that whole you know you have to do the work to do you know to progress to have that better life and so that that does resonate with me and soyeah he is a big inspiration continues to be.
And you know we lost my dad in in 2018 but he was a cadaveric donor and so you know the when we talk about mission right? And I tell people this all the time all three business units touched my dad's life at the end of his life right. He received numerous blood transfusions that extended his life when he was in ICU, the cross matching was done at IRL which at the time was in QualTex and then when he passed he was a cadaveric donor and you know we could we collected we recovered from from my dad and we produced product.
And so that legacy is just you know very special it's what continues to motivate and I and I know that there are families just like me that had a similar story and it's just it's so inspirational to continue to do what's best so that we can continue to have that for other families and have an impact on other people's lives.
So yeah well I know your dad would be very proud of you what you've accomplished and where you're at I think we're all proud of you too we love working with you you've got a fun-loving spirit, you just embrace new challenges and encourage your team in really great ways. It's been a joy and thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Hearts Afire.
Thank you for having me this is fun. I can't believe the time's already up we could go on forever.

Executive producers of Hearts Afire are Heather Hughes and Jay Podjenski. Your director is David King with technical assistance from Matt Flores. Our logo was designed by Roberto Esquivel. our host is Adrienne Mendoza.
If you have an idea for Hearts Afire please feel free to email us HeartsAfire@biobridgeglobal.org.