Hearts Afire

David King
From Norcross, Georgia, it’s Hearts Afire, the podcast for the team at BioBridge Global, where we're working every day to save and enhance lives through the healing power of human cells and tissue. I'm your host, David King, and today we have the third installment of our three-part series of interviews with Dr. Norman Kallman, who served as the CEO of the organization for 27 years.
So, tell us a little bit more about the formation of BioBridge Global.

Dr. Norman Kalmin
It's like what's happened in the commercial world as well. That is, for example, Facebook has an umbrella called Meta, and you can apply that to a number of other organizations that have a general title describing all of what they do. So there was no point in continuing with the name South Texas Blood & Tissue Center when there were so many other aspects to the organization. And that was a decision that the board made, together with senior management, for an appropriate name, BioBridge Global. Certainly fitting in with what we were trying to do.

David King
And you mentioned working with the board - you worked with some pretty remarkable people on the board through the years, didn't you?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the original mentor that I had was Cliff Jeffries. He's took over the leadership soon after I arrived there. Another board chairman who spent a year or two and didn't really make as much of an impact as Cliff Jeffries did. He was a businessman and a wonderful person to work with, very open to suggestions and innovation. Then there was Bill Stone, he was actually a professor at Trinity University in the field of genetics, named chair - he had been on the board for two years before. He was a real scientist. He was a person who helped me think through a lot of things. I worked with him for a number of years and well, bless his heart he is 99 this month, and living in Barcelona, Spain. We still keep in touch.

After Bill, my next partner in developing the center here was Mike Kreager. He’s also very innovative and he had legal experience. As a lawyer, he helped in developing aspects of the organization, such as the renaming of BioBridge. I remember comment about him , that he was a regular blood donor, and he used to say ‘Seeing, you got blood out of a lawyer.’

David King
I have to say that that Mike Kreager told me a funny story about you. Having worked at the newspaper but not being responsible for this kind of thing, every year the newspaper would publish the salaries of the heads of local nonprofit organizations, and apparently you called Mike and and and complained about this because your salary was in the newspaper. And Mike says Norm – you know how he talks – Norm, you know that Dr. (John) Hagee, he's at the top of that list. He made $1 million and he didn't save one life last year.

Dr. Norman Kalmin
I got used to the idea of being part of a public organization, a not-for-profit, things were going to appear in the media whether you wanted it to happen or not. So some of the newspaper interviews I turned down, like when they came to talk to me about salaries of the employees, not mine. The financial reports of the center were available to the public, and they could look it up themselves. This just became a big topic for a while in the newspapers.

David King
Well, that's because there were two newspapers competing with each other and they had to try to scoop each other. I was not part of that competition. I was behind the scenes.
When you arrived, did you have any idea that this organization would go from just sort of a a small blood bank to what it's become?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
One of my goals would be to try to develop it. And as I said earlier, I knew that I had the opportunity to do things with the South Texas Regional Blood Bank that I couldn't do as a member of the American Red Cross. It was based in Washington D.C.
I couldn't call any shots for that organization, but coming to this organization, it was really ripe for innovation and development, and fortunately we had a board that was willing to work with me on that issue. Otherwise, I probably would have moved on somewhere else but. And it was never an issue.

David King
It really helped to have sort of a forward-thinking board, didn't it to support you?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
You cannot do it without them. Some people are going to be just restricting innovation and ideas, putting a damper on good ideas, you cannot progress.

David King
What stands out to you from your 30 years with the organization?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Well, what stands that is the fact that you've gone from 150 employees collecting 50,000 units of blood in 1983 to where we are today. The realization that employee numbers are rising and the organization has facilities not only in San Antonio but also in Victoria, Texas, and now in Norcross, Georgia. It has several donor rooms and a whole fleet of vehicles, so that we are showing our name in a very wide area. That is a big change from how things were.

David King
And in a joint effort. But it took someone with some vision to make this happen and and, you know, we all sort of look back on on your time and as we've said, not many people are still here still when you were chief executive. When you finally left after many, many years of service, we all indebted to you. I have to say.

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Well, thank you. I couldn't have done it alone. As I've said, not only the board members were supportive, but I've had some wonderful staff working with me, and senior management, mid-level and at the bench level. Everybody during the years that I was there were very supportive and open to suggestion. There were times when we had to push them to work a little bit more. I'm not in the league of Elon Musk, having people work 24 hours a day, but I did get a few more hours each day at our people to get us off the ground. And it's thanks to them as well that we are the organization that you see today.

David King
Anything else you want to talk about here? Is there anything else that occurred to you that that you wanted to talk about?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Well, what I can say is that I'm really pleased that I made my career in the field of blood banking, tissue banking, etc., because I'd started out as a pathologist who did training in blood banking. And I was able to move from that to running a major organization which has always been an interest of mine, particularly since my father ran a business in South Africa, where I used to assist him, and I actually enjoyed the executive work involved in being in the business. So yeah, it was an opportunity to combine medical and business training into one field. Which suited me quite well.

David King
What sort of business?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
My father ran a general store in South Africa where he sold men's and women's clothing, draperies and things like that. And I used to help him out on the weekends when I wasn't in school or even keep financial books. I was always like a keen bookkeeper, and that was one of my favorite subjects in school. So I'm glad I had that initial training because as you know, when you have the field of medicine, you're not going to learn a lot about business, and that's a weakness, I think, of medicine.

David King
So what's life like now?

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Well, after BioBridge Global I had the pleasure working for a plasma center, which was interesting because we were doing testing for that plasma center, and I could see things from the other side, for eight years. It was more of a part-time job in Atlanta. What is life like after being in blood banking? It was certainly less pressure.
I did not have to work 24 hours a day. It gave me time to focus on my game of golf, which has never improved, but still that gives me pleasure. And also I'm a member of the Atlanta Men's Club, which provides educational services and also charitable work. So I'm staying pretty busy and such, just giving lectures, sometimes talking about blood banking. And also helping to raise money for food kitchens and clothing, that is. Provided to misfortunate people in the community.
It's also giving me more time to travel and so I have gone on some cruises and overseas visits. We might catch up with some of the people I met through the International Society of Blood Transfusion - that was a great introduction to people living h ere and living in Europe, and when I make trips to those areas, I make a point of looking them up.

David King
Even now, you're still you're still global.

Dr. Norman Kalmin
I'm still global.

David King
I think that exhausted all the questions that I had.

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Oh good. I’m pleased to see that things are so moving along and the right same direction as they were before, because you know an organization can rise and then fall and the difficulty is keeping it at a certain level.

David King
Absolutely - getting it up to that level where it's more than just a community blood bank, where it's multi multifunctional organization.

Dr. Norman Kalmin
Exactly.

David King
Executive producers of the Hearts Afire podcast are Adrienne Mendoza and Jay Podjenski. Our director is Angelica Sandoval, with technical assistance from Matt Flores. The Harts Afire logo was designed by Roberto Esquivel. If you have an idea for the Hearts Afire podcast, a suggestion about a guest, if you'd like to be on the Hearts Afire podcast, email us, heartsafire@bioridgeglobal.org. And thanks for listening.