In this episode of High Velocity Careers, Stone Payton talks with Alex Timothee from Gold Standard Preservation. Alex discusses his crucial role in organ preservation and transplantation, emphasizing the importance of safe and effective organ recovery. He shares his journey into the field, the challenges and rewards of his work, and the significance of collaboration and trust. The conversation also highlights advancements in technology, such as machine perfusion, and Alex’s enriching experience in the Kennesaw State University Executive MBA program. The episode offers valuable insights into the organ transplantation industry and the impact of continuous learning and dedication.
Alex Timothee is an accomplished entrepreneur and business leader with a diverse background in organ preservation and emerging technology solutions.
With a focus on creating innovative, scalable services, Alex has built and managed Gold Standard Preservation (GSP), a service-based company specializing in organ preservation.
GSP is renowned for its commitment to advancing clinical practices and providing cutting-edge solutions to transplant centers.
Alex has pursued extensive education in business, technology, and leadership. He is currently an EMBA student at Kennesaw State University. Alex’s education has equipped him with the skills and knowledge to lead in complex, multidisciplinary environments where he consistently drives innovation and operational excellence.
Throughout his career, Alex has been a pioneer in the medical services industry, particularly in organ preservation. His expertise spans various roles, from lab management to overseeing clinical operations and ensuring compliance with industry standards. Under his leadership, GSP has become a trusted partner for transplant centers, offering services that are not only innovative but also deeply rooted in best practices and ethical standards.
Alex’s exceptional leadership and commitment to team development are well-known. He has received positive feedback from his teams and has been recognized as an outstanding team lead. His dedication to fostering a collaborative and supportive work environment is evident in his creation of a Social & Team Building Committee within GSP, which focuses on enhancing team cohesion through various social and professional events.
Beyond his professional endeavors, Alex is a dedicated husband and father of five daughters and three granddaughters. He balances his demanding career with his responsibilities as a parent. His leadership extends into his personal life, where he takes pride in being a role model for his family.
Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High velocity Careers. Brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. For more information, go to kennesaw.edu/mba. Now here’s your host.
Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of High Velocity Careers. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. This is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with gold standard preservation. Mr. Alex Timothee. How are you, man?
Alex Timothee: I’m doing good, stone. Thanks for having me. That’s some good intro music, by the way.
Stone Payton: I like it too, and it is a delight to have you in studio. I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. Alex, I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, okay, but I think a great place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners mission. Purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man.
Alex Timothee: What my team does and what our mission is really just to help organizations such as transplant centers or hospitals or even oppose organ procurement organizations, just make sure that those organs get recovered safely properly and that they get transplanted into the right patient.
Stone Payton: Well, this is a very fascinating topic for me, and it has a personal connection for me. I didn’t share this with you before we went on air, and I just dawned on me, My wife, right at a year ago, donated a kidney. Oh, wow. To her best friend growing up. Now, it didn’t go directly. No, no. You know, but it all worked out where she donated somebody else. And then Mary finally got one. And so we’ve we’ve been on the edges of this arena, so I. Yeah, I’m fascinated to learn more. What is the backstory? How in the world did you find yourself in this line of work, man?
Alex Timothee: No, no. Um, first of all, congrats to your wife, to being part of a period exchange program that is such a complex world and just trying to get the right organ from one person to the next. And then you got to go through, like, several different patients and centers and just to make it happen, it’s incredible. So congrats to her for being part of that. Um, and how we end up getting started was there was a need. Um, there was a need for a go between between the hospitals and the Oppose to make sure that those hospitals have someone who’s knowledgeable, who’s skilled enough to assist the surgeons in getting those organs so they. When I was approached to start this business, I was a little reluctant, but I said that, um, you know what? I think they come to me for a reason because there’s trust in me. So I decided, let’s let’s go for it. And so far, so good. We’ve been doing great and I’ve been learning a lot. And, um. I’m blessed.
Stone Payton: Well, it certainly sounds like you enjoy the work. I see it in your eyes. We can hear it in your in your voice. And you’ve been at it a while now. Yes.
Alex Timothee: Yeah, I’ve been with gold standard preservation. We’ve been operating for about two years now, but I’ve been in transplant for about, gosh, 16 years. Oh my. Just about. Yeah, in different areas. Um, I started out mainly doing organ transplants on the recipient side, helping on the sideline, helping surgeons put the livers in. And I’m learning a lot through that. And then eventually I’m like, oh, let me learn about kidneys. Then I learned about kidneys and perfusing those. And then from there it was like, hey, what’s this donor life looking like? Then I got into donors and the next thing you know, boom, here I am. I’m like, wow, is this just it was really just a roller coaster.
Stone Payton: So at this point in your career, what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you at this point?
Alex Timothee: Ah, that’s a really good one. I like the collaboration. I like helping and being useful, and to me, that’s what brings me the most joy and finding innovative ways to accomplish the goal. And and just being able to have that freedom to. I could just toss ideas back and forth with my hospital leaders and, you know, and they give him good feedback and we’re just working together and making something happen. They’ll say, hey, we have this problem. We want to get this outcome. Okay, what can we do in the middle? And just that thought process has been really rewarding for me.
Stone Payton: So my experience is, you know, just a little more than a year old and kind of restricted. But I have to believe that there have been a great many changes in this arena and probably some, some new technologies that have come down. What kind of changes have you, have you seen over the years?
Alex Timothee: Yeah, actually, you know, in the last 5 to 10 years, one of the biggest changes that’s come around is machine perfusion, where we are using these pumps basically to keep these organs preserved properly outside the body longer because, um, I remember when your wife went through the program, um, for the paid exchange, she probably does a very finite time. They were very coordinated. They got to be here at this time. You got to take it out at this time. And all these things happened. But there are things that happen where the patient can’t get to the hospital in time, or there’s some minor complication, and that organ is on a very tight time limit. So with these machines, now that we start pumping the preservation fluid or even blood through these organs, it helps keep it alive, in essence, a lot longer to give the patient more time to get to the hospital or to mitigate any sort of complication that would arise that would be time sensitive.
Stone Payton: So you and or some people on your team must be incredibly gifted, educated about just managing logistics. You must be.
Alex Timothee: Yeah. Um, logistics is tough because a lot of times when we get called out, we have to fly out to a different state to get the organ. Um, so we are available 24 over seven, um, anytime, day or night. They call us up, they say, hey, we need some help. And we’re like, okay, we’re there. We meet them at a designated location, we hop on a plane, we get there, and then we turn right back around. So, I mean, you’re talking about all of this within 6 to 10 hours, depending on how far we got to go.
Stone Payton: Wow, that is a short window. And you got to keep everything in intact.
Alex Timothee: Everything? Yep.
Stone Payton: So is there a sales and marketing aspect to your business, or is it a different kind of inner wired community?
Alex Timothee: So it’s not so much sales and marketing. There is some marketing involved just to kind of get your name out there, because this role that we’re in is constantly evolving. Before it was, there was never any outside entity other than hospital or the oppo who did this sort of work. So now that we’re here, we’re that we’re in that space in between both centers. So a lot of our work and business comes from word of mouth and being trusted in the industry. So yeah, we could put marketing ads out there. We can do sales calls, but those don’t return much because if because you’re dealing with a patient’s life. So I can reach out to 20 different hospitals, but they say, if I don’t know you, if I don’t trust you, we’re not going to take a chance for our patients So you have to basically be well known to in order to generate any ridiculousness.
Stone Payton: So I am fond of telling people in my arena, you know, good training, consulting media that that it’s all about relationship and we have to build that trust. But that’s got to be like magnified a hundred fold in your it’s all about relationship and trust.
Alex Timothee: Relationship and trust all of it. And that’s what really I’ve been getting a lot out of the KSU Emba program from that is learning how to build those relationships and how to learn to build trust within the industry and with business leaders. So it’s been very profound, the learning experience I’ve been getting in that arena.
Stone Payton: So tell us about that experience. You know, they underwrite this program okay. So we’ll give them we’ll give them a little shout out. But yeah and we’ve had some faculty members. We had some deans in here the other day in the studio. Uh, but let’s hear it from the student perspective. You speak to that experience if you would.
Alex Timothee: Yeah. When I signed up for this program, it was mostly for I want to learn business acumen. Right? I want to learn how to run a business effectively and make sure that business is successful long term. What I did not expect to get out of it mostly is leadership skills, how to manage a team effectively, and the faculty such as Thomas Devaney and James Davis and Professor Jacek. Those guys have really pushed on us critical thinking when it comes to leadership and management. And as a student going in, I tell my wife several times that, man, I gotta, I gotta do all this. And this is, this is crazy. I’m like, how am I going to get this done? And I got to work with these people and my team is at school is actually a really great group of people. Um, but the experience itself is learning How to communicate properly with was day one, right? They’re like, okay, we’re going to be working with teams. You guys got to know how to talk to each other and our team. We made a joke where we said, hey, we’re all adults. We’re all here to complete this program and get, you know, get the grade. But that’s it’s not that simple. It’s really not that simple. You have to learn a lot of different personalities. Um, we took assessments on personality, learning styles, leadership styles, communication styles, um, conflict resolution. And we actually learn about each other on a qualitative version, qualitative measure to see where we are. Um, and then kind of just kind of find where we land with each other and, and get those projects done. Um, and that’s a huge kudos to the team for how they, for the school, for how they build, um, that program. It’s really good.
Stone Payton: So the curriculum, as I understand it, I guess the best word for it. And maybe you know, a different word. It’s integrated, right? Like you don’t study a subject and then study a different subject. You apply all of these domains to like real world scenarios. Yes. Yeah.
Alex Timothee: Yeah. Most definitely. Um, so for example, like I said, the first semester we talked about communication, leadership styles, um, personalities. And at the same time learning about accounting, learning about marketing and, um, you know, and, and we and then we build upon each lesson. And the cool thing is what? It’s one week in a month, we attend courses, right? So it’s a very intense Saturday and Sunday, eight hours. They feed us great food, by the way. Um, man, it’s great food. Uh, so they feed us and while we’re, they’re going through the whole day, what we learned on that Saturday and Sunday, we apply it the very next week I go to work Monday back.
Stone Payton: At Gold Standard. You’re applying what you learned.
Alex Timothee: I am applying it actually. On the way home from school, I call up my director, Selma. She’s fabulous, by the way. She, um. Without her, we would not be where we are. Shout out to you, Selma. Um, I call her on the way home from school, and I’m, like, for the hour long commute. I’m like, Selma, this is what we learned. This is what we’re going to try to implement within our program ourselves. And it has been working out in phenomenally.
Stone Payton: So working with teams is real life. So I love that that’s part of the part of the curriculum. And then so when you’re working in in teams like this, how do you organize the team. Do you find out what people want to do, what they can do? Like what where the rubber hits the road. How do you get a team going both in school and over at Gold Standard?
Alex Timothee: Um, well, I approach it in two different, two different ways. Uh, with school, um I really rely on the team for on our communication because we’re all, like, equal in a sense, right? There’s not a group thing where, hey, I’m here and I’m telling you guys what to do, right? It’s all like, nope. Everybody got their input and and we all work together on the business side of it. It’s a little different since I am the CEO. Um, I have to rely on delegation. So in order to build this team, what I’ve learned is I have to leverage my resources. And part of that is working with a consulting group. Um, whilst consulting. And they handle a lot of the team exercises and the coaching for them. So they because they can approach my, my staff in a way that I can’t because I’ve tried it, I’ve went to them openly and I was like, hey guys, we’re going to evaluations and so forth And because of my role, it doesn’t get received the same way as it would if it was a third party who’s unbiased on both sides. So I’ve learned to leverage that. Um, and that firm, um, consulting has been doing really good work, uh, making the team more cohesive because they can trust what they learn from her. And then they come with me, and then they learn how to speak with me without fear. And now we’re building that trust within ourselves.
Stone Payton: What’s the name of the consulting firm?
Alex Timothee: YLC Consulting.
Stone Payton: YLC Consulting. Thank you for that. I’m going to send them an invoice because I think we gave them a great plug.
Alex Timothee: Yeah. Please do. Maybe they might cut my fee down.
Stone Payton: There you go. We’ll try to get you a little break.
Stone Payton: On the price. So I don’t know when or how you’d find the time. You you have gold standard. You’re you’re pursuing this executive MBA but interests, hobbies, passions pursuits outside the scope of the work right now. Or is it just had to take a back burner?
Alex Timothee: Hobbyist has taken a back burner.
Speaker4: Yeah.
Alex Timothee: Yeah, it really has. Um, one things that when I interviewed for the program they told us was they’re like, hey, uh, they were kind of concerned about me at first. They were like, you seem like you got a lot going on. Yeah.
Stone Payton: Do you have irons in the fire?
Alex Timothee: Yeah. Can you really? And I was like, no, I’m not. I can manage my schedule. I’m the boss. I can do this. I can no I can’t no, no, I really can’t. No. Um, what I’ve learned is you really have to make a schedule like, you know, even today, I know I was talking. You asked me. Hey, how do you, uh, you know, we do. The weekend. I had to consult my calendar because, um, part of this program is you have to make your the week ending class. That’s a rock. Everything else around your life revolves around that. And then you have meetings that you have with your team either weekly or twice a week or whatever, and then you make that a rock also. So you kind of so you so your life revolves around school itself. And, and then when it comes to work, what I’ve done is and I just started doing this recently because my lovely wife told me that, you know, she don’t see me enough. So what? So what I started doing is I started to set my week up in a way where I can arrange all my meetings on certain days of the week, and then I will have my class stuff on certain days of the week, and then I’ll have my family time on certain days of the week and certain hours. Um, and so far that’s been working great. Um, I haven’t had no complaints. Everyone seems satisfied. Um, and my hobbies, I just squeeze it in whenever I can in between there. Um, which is not a big deal, because a lot of times when I am getting overwhelmed with concepts and ideas or coursework. Then I just take a break, do my little hobby, and then it helps, refreshes me, gives me re-energized, and it also gives me some ideas to where I could go back into it with a fresh set of lens.
Stone Payton: So I remember a conversation in the last couple of weeks we were talking about, or I kind of prompted the idea of talking about work life balance. Yeah. And that person, she made a point of her. The frame for her was work life integration, as it was a better mental model for her. And I think maybe I’m kind of adopting that. It’s, you know, because I run my own, you know, studio. I’m part of the, the team that owns the network. It never really is totally set aside, but it’s integrated. Now, I do find that I need a little bit of that. I call it white space and that if I do kind of back off just a little bit and it allows me to recharge and I genuinely feel like I am when I get back, I’m I’m equipped to serve even that much better after I’ve had that. But I can’t imagine doing what I’m doing now and pursuing an executive MBA. So kudos to you. But I think that’s a good strong tactic or tip is to is to lock that calendar and create blocks of time to do whatever it is you need to do and figure out what your hub is. And right now, the hub, the rock, I think you said, is you’re working around the executive MBA thing and then you’re plugging the other stuff.
Alex Timothee: Yeah.
Alex Timothee: And the time passes quickly. I mean, when I first started this, I was like, oh my gosh, I got how many more months left to go. I’m like, I can’t make it through. And now we’re a year in and I’m like, wait, I just got two semesters left. Oh, wow. You know, I mean, the time just flies. And the things I’ve learned through that whole, that whole process is like, you know, I’m gonna tell you a little side story here about school. Um, early on in my medical career, when I was, like, serving as, like, a as a medical assistant for an outpatient clinic I remember when the patient comes in, we kind of get the blood pressure, kind of just get them relaxed before they go in for the procedure. And I met a guy, he was actually a director here at KSU, and he told me about the MBA program, and he said he’s like, one of the coolest things we do is we have an international program where our students go overseas and they learn business. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty cool. Okay, now go to sleep. Um, you know, so fast forward. Then I started going to school, taking classes here and there. This was like, man, years ago, right? Um, taking classes. And once I went to KSU for my undergrad for leadership and management, um, and I told my fiance at the time, I was like, hey, I’m done with school. I’m not. I’m not doing this no more. This this is this is ridiculous. Uh, and no less than 30 days later, I’m applying for the MBA program, and and then I sat back. I’m like, wait a minute, this is the same program that this gentleman was telling me about over a decade ago, and here I am joining this exact same program. So when it comes to being the rock, part of it is, hey, you got to set aside two weeks in the summer. In the spring because you got to go to international residency.
Stone Payton: Okay, so this component is still part of the process. So you’re going to get to do the international.
Alex Timothee: Yeah.
Alex Timothee: We’re going to a country and um, in South America, and we’re going to spend almost two weeks there working with a real world business and consulting them on how they can improve whatever they need to improve on. Um, we, I think our next semester we will start in January. So for from January, February, March, April, we’ll be doing, um, virtual meetings. And then in May when we get there, we actually go into, I think April or May. Then we actually got to go there and we actually say, okay, this what we’ve been working on, you guys won’t have this problem to solve. Here’s the problem. And here’s our here’s our results and here’s our recommendations. And take it from there.
Stone Payton: Sounds like a marvelous opportunity for remote broadcast of this show to me.
Alex Timothee: I think so. You know, I think we could talk to the faculty about getting you guys out there for.
Stone Payton: I love it.
Alex Timothee: For at least a couple of days just to, you know, interview these guys. I think it’d be great.
Stone Payton: Absolutely.
Alex Timothee: It’d be great. But, yeah, that that and I also have to set aside. So my work now is I am blocking out almost three weeks in one month where I cannot do no work because I have to do the school thing. Mhm. You know, and I told my wife and a lot of us, we actually bring our spouses with us and we have the flexibility to bring them out there with us in that time. So yeah. Yeah. It’s really it’s a really great program. I can’t talk about it enough.
Stone Payton: All right. Before we wrap, let’s let’s leave our listeners with a couple of actionable tips, some do’s and don’ts, maybe something they could be reading around any of these topics pursuing a high velocity career, uh, cultivating and nurturing a team, but let’s leave them in with with a little bit of something. They can just go and try to be thinking about or apply immediately after hearing this conversation.
Alex Timothee: Okay. Um, if you’re thinking about going into business or thinking about how to grow your business, the one thing you really have to put in mind is don’t think about profits. Think about who you’re serving. Um, or in our case, we are serving patients. And one of the things that my, one of our missions is we tell ourselves is that we are here for the donor families because we are they are being approached at one of the darkest times in their life to donate your loved ones organs for a stranger. And and when and I mean, that’s just difficult alone. So we all want to be remembered and we all want our story to continue on once we’re like our lives had meaning. So our role is we’re just making sure that that organ gets a home and that makes sure that that donor and that donor family knows that their loved one’s story still goes on. So if you put who you’re serving on the forefront and be as useful as possible to those people or to those stakeholders, the profits will come and your business will succeed you just be transparent, run with integrity and and you’ll reach for the stars.
Stone Payton: What a marvelous piece of counsel. I’m so glad that I asked. All right, so if any of our listeners would like to learn more about the executive MBA program, if they’d like to learn more about Gold Standard, or if they would just like to connect with you, is are you open to having them kind of connect with you in some, some way, or learn more about the company.
Alex Timothee: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m very chatty sometimes. Um, so.
Stone Payton: Yeah, I noticed that Alex.
Alex Timothee: Um. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Stone. I’m sorry. Um, no. They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, I think my link would be available on the website.
Stone Payton: We’ll make sure that we have it published.
Alex Timothee: Okay. Yeah. Or they can reach out through our website. Gold standard preservation org. There’s a contact us section to the bottom there. They can reach out to us if they have any questions about what we do, how we do it, or if they like to partner with us in any kind of way. I’m huge on collaboration and um, yeah, for the KSU Emba program, I think it’s ksu.edu/emba, I believe.
Stone Payton: Wow, that’s pretty cool.
Stone Payton: You know what? I’m the producer of the show and I didn’t even remember all that.
Alex Timothee: Uh, yeah. And you can reach out on me on LinkedIn at Alex, Timothy, Timothy. And I’m feel free to DM me and I’ll message. I’ll reply back pretty quickly and and we’ll have a chat.
Stone Payton: And if you’re on campus some weekends, you might run into him.
Alex Timothee: Yes, yes. If anyone’s thinking about going into the program, definitely find me. Um, I’ll give you all the deets and all the how to prep yourselves.
Stone Payton: Fantastic. Alex, what a delight! I have really enjoyed the conversation. I am so glad we got to do it here in studio. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm man. It’s been an invigorating, inspiring conversation. The work that you guys are doing at Gold Standard is so, so important. And we we sure appreciate you, man.
Alex Timothee: Thanks a lot, Stone. Thanks for having me here. This was great.
Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Alex. Timothy with gold standard Preservation and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on high velocity careers.
