Dawn Zier, EE '87, SM '90

Christopher Reichert, MOT ’04, and Dawn Zier, EE '87, SM '90, President and Chief Operating Officer of Tivity Health, discuss her career leading large organizations as a data-driven manager. The two also discuss Dawn’s time at MIT Sloan and how she defines success.

Christopher Reichert: Welcome to Sloanies Talking with Sloanies, a candid conversation with alumni and faculty about the MIT Sloan experience, and how it influences what they're doing today. So, what does it mean to be a Sloanie? Over the course of this podcast, you'll hear from guests who are making a difference in their community, including our own very important one here at Sloan. I'm your host, Christopher Reichert.

Welcome to Sloanies Talking with Sloanies. Today, I'm really excited to welcome Dawn Zier to the podcast. Lest she be modest, let me just go through some of her accomplishments. She is currently the president and Chief Operating Officer for Tivity Health, and before that, CEO for Nutrisystem. We'll cover how those two came to be. Institutional Investor recognized her as one of the best CEOs in the country. She was an EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018, I want to talk about entrepreneurship in a large organization, as well. She serves on numerous boards, and she was with Reader's Digest Association for many years, and that led towards becoming President of their International Business, with nearly a billion in revenue and a thousand employees. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Dawn Zier: Great to be here. So much fun to be in Cambridge.

Christopher Reichert: What brings you to Cambridge?

Dawn Zier: Well actually I'm here with Tivity Health, and we're working with the AgeLab at MIT, and we're having a symposium tomorrow. First time up here for that, and excited to be here, dealing with the aging population.

Christopher Reichert: Oh great. What's the link with Tivity and AgeLab?

Dawn Zier: There's been a long relationship. Tivity Health is best known for its brand Silver Sneakers, prior to the acquisition of Nutrisystem, which is a product for seniors in terms of keeping them fit. Then the AgeLab is all about how the aging population is moving. I think 11,000 people turn 65 every day. So, it's becoming a growing issue for us and how we age gracefully, and make sure that our seniors are taken care of.

Christopher Reichert: Interesting. Tell me about the Tivity/Nutrisystem combination.

Dawn Zier: That's a new thing. In March, we combined forces. Tivity acquired Nutrisystem. I was approached in September by the CEO of Tivity, Donato Tramuto, and he was interested in acquiring a nutrition-based company, so he could complete the formula of calories in, which would be nutrition, and calories out, which is the exercise part of it. For me as the CEO of Nutrisystem, it was very interesting, because we really are an e-commerce driven company, and really direct-to-consumer. But one of the things that I was interested in, in addition to all the advertising and media that we currently did, was to really have other forms of distribution. They have relationships with all the health plans. They have relationships with 16,000 gyms. So a good opportunity to come together and really address a holistic solution around health. Now in their case, their focus was on seniors. Nutrisystem is much broader than that, but I think it'll be interesting to see how the two companies play together and can really address different ages.

Christopher Reichert: Interesting. Now, I know you're a data-driven manager, so have you ever calculated how many calories you've saved people, or the United States, in all your clients? How many customers did Nutrisystem have or does it have?

Dawn Zier: Well we have hundreds of thousands of customers, a lot of customers out there, millions and millions over time. A lot of customers. I don't have the exact stat, but we have calculated it. What's interesting to us is that we realize that tracking matters. Of course, we all do it in a more sophisticated way today, with all of our apps, right, with the phone, with your watch. But doing it on a piece of paper is just as effective. It's just how we migrate over time to more sophisticated ways of doing it. But still, just really making sure you're writing down what you eat and what you don't is really important. What I've learned is that I will make sure every step I take counts.

I actually wore a Fitbit often, and then I kept washing them and they died on me. So I carry around my iPhone with me. I make sure I get my steps in. If I leave my iPhone, I will go back to pick it up. But as far as tracking food, that's a little different. Because if I take that candy Kiss from my assistant's desk, that doesn't get written down in the journal, but make sure I get every step. So we do tend to over give ourselves credit for our exercise, and tend to underestimate our calories by as much as 20%.

Christopher Reichert: Well on that note, I want to introduce a new segment here, which I call, “There is no right answer.”

Dawn Zier: Okay.

Christopher Reichert: Alright, so you have to make a choice here. By the way, did you spend a lot of time in Fort Washington, in Nutrisystem?

Dawn Zier: Yes.

Christopher Reichert: I grew up in that area. Have you ever been to MaGerks?

Dawn Zier: Yes we have. We actually had fun, fun Halloween parties there.

Christopher Reichert: I happen to have their menu in front of us here.

Dawn Zier: So funny.

Christopher Reichert: I think you need to choose something from the menu here. So here it is. There is no right answer here. I think we should start with 30 of the wings, maybe the maple bacon, the sesame teriyaki.

Dawn Zier: No.

Christopher Reichert: Is that going to set us back at all in our plan?

Dawn Zier: That's not on Nutrisystem, not on our Nutrisystem at all.

Christopher Reichert: I went there recently, and my sister ordered the Middle Eastern plate, and I think it was about as wide as this table. It was crazy. I can let you look at that, but we'll come back to that in a minute. So here we go. There is no right answer. Okay, we'll start easy. Carrot sticks or celery sticks?

Dawn Zier: Carrots.

Christopher Reichert: Apple or a peach?

Dawn Zier: Apple.

Christopher Reichert: Chicken or fish?

Dawn Zier: Chicken.

Christopher Reichert: Okay. Craft beer or light beer?

Dawn Zier: Light.

Christopher Reichert: Cheesecake or cheese plate?

Dawn Zier: Cheese plate.

Christopher Reichert: Interesting. M&M'S or peanut M&M'S?

Dawn Zier: Oh, M&M'S.

Christopher Reichert: Reader's Digest Sweepstakes or Publisher’ss Clearinghouse Sweepstakes?

Dawn Zier: Oh, Reader's Digest Sweepstakes. Come on!

Christopher Reichert: Of course. Let's talk about your time at Reader's Digest. You took that to all new places. Tell me about that journey.

Dawn Zier: Oh, it was great. It was so much fun. I spent 20 years there, which is kind of amazing, because you look back and you never think you'll spend that much time in one company. But the company kept changing, and I kept getting different experiences there. When I graduated from Sloan, I went to Chase Manhattan for a couple of years, and then ended up at Reader's Digest as a Product Manager and rose up there over time. But the most exciting thing I ever did, and I think one of the most professionally and personally gratifying experiences, was when I started to run Europe for Reader's Digest. It actually brought me back to my Sloan days a little bit, because one of the things I loved about the Sloan culture is the multi-national part of it. The fact that we meet people from all over the world all the time, and we find out that the world actually is a pretty small place, especially these days.

With Reader's Digest, I was running Europe and then running International and working with 26 different countries. I realized it's something I really love, working with people across all different cultures. I think that stemmed from my time at MIT.

Christopher Reichert: Obviously the business evolved. I remember finding the Reader's Digest little mini-book in doctors’ offices or wherever they were.

Dawn Zier: Right. Much more than that.

Christopher Reichert: So, tell us about how that evolved, and Nutrisystem as well.

Dawn Zier: Reader's Digest, was the magazine. The little magazine was really the entree, and it was talking a little about profit and loss, it was the loss leader that brought the customers in. Then what we did is it was a backend operation where it was all about books and home entertainment products that then migrated into jewelry, migrated into wine, and a couple of other things around the world. But it was about the customer experience.

What I loved about my education at Sloan and really keeping with the analytics of being an engineer, but getting more business perspective, was one of the reasons I didn't go into brand marketing. I went into direct-to-consumer, because it was measurable.

One of the things we looked into at Reader's Digest, which is a skill set I took over to Nutrisystem, was working to understand each customer's worth and the revenue per customer. It was all about bringing them in and then really maximizing the experience. Of course, it's not just about selling them things. You have to really manage that customer experience, and make sure they're satisfied.

Christopher Reichert: Yes. I was reading some of the things on your ... it was an interview you did, and you talked about how you have to really know how your customers evolve over time.

Dawn Zier: [affirmative]

Christopher Reichert: When you joined Nutrisystem, it was not in great shape.

Dawn Zier: Right.

Christopher Reichert: Tell us about that, particularly that first year, I think where the pressure was on to have some runs on the board?

Dawn Zier: I'm a big believer in celebrating the small wins, and then they turn into bigger wins. The number one thing is really to understand your customer. We had a contact center at Nutrisystem. It was interesting when I got there, because the contact center was very much a different part of the company, even though it was only a floor apart. The business people didn't really seem to tap into the values of the contact center, which really is your first line of contact with the consumer.

Christopher Reichert: This is the 1-800 sort of number?

Dawn Zier: Right. Calling in, customer service, counseling, sales. So a lot of calls coming in there, and nobody ever seemed to talk to the contact center. I came in. I started talking to them. What I found is that they actually knew a ton about the company, and a lot about what worked and didn't work. Over the years we integrated that a lot more. But I think that was a little gold nugget for us that we hadn't really optimized. A lot of the great ideas that drove revenue for Nutrisystem came from listening to the customer and listening to the contact center.

What's interesting, especially when you're in a business that's about weight loss, every woman in the world will probably tell you she's an expert on it. But what we really had to do was be careful not to be an audience of one. Just because I've done something or somebody else has done something, that doesn't necessarily reflect the mindset of everybody else. We all think we're experts, but I think this is where companies sometimes go adrift, is that you think you know more than the consumer, and you're not actually tapping into them for those insights.

Christopher Reichert: Well, Steve Jobs was famous for saying that people wouldn't know what feedback to give him on the iPhone, because they had never seen it before. How does that work with Nutrisystem? As you introduce new products or applications or whatnot, over ... You were there for how many years?

Dawn Zier: Six-and-a-half years as CEO. We sold the company in March, and now I'm there in a broader capacity. But I think innovation for Nutrisystem, which is about weight loss, has to be easy. It has to work. What I like about the product is, it's scientifically backed, which obviously comes back to my roots in Cambridge. We do a clinical study, so there's a lot of science behind what we do. But then, it's also those softer things, that you have to weigh-in. You have to think that the weight loss journey, it's one of the most emotional journeys that people go on. It's not just about how you physically look. It affects your finances, because there's a lot of health-related issues. It affects your emotions. A lot of times, the emotions actually are the driver of the physical.

Christopher Reichert: The habits, right.

Dawn Zier: The reality is also, we're so time compressed these days, and so busy, that I think we've become a generation, as a soccer mom, as a football dad, whatever it might be, that gets done every day at six o'clock with the kids’ sports and then we're fast-fooding it through McDonald's or grabbing pizza. So there are a lot of unhealthy habits. We try to understand the key drivers, and then how we can innovate. First, it was about a 28-day program. Then what we realized is, people want a little more flexibility. So you have to build flexibility in. One of the most exciting things we've done, and we're still figuring out how to monetize it, is based off the trend of everybody doing ancestry or things like that to find out “Who are my relatives?” “Who am I related to?” We actually worked with one of the companies and developed a DNA Body Blueprint, which is all about nutrition. That was kind of fun and exciting.

Christopher Reichert: I know people are nervous about having that sort of test done and then later on it being used against them in some way. How do you cover that concern?

Dawn Zier: Well, unlike some companies, we don't share the data, so I think it comes down to data privacy. But the other thing is, based exactly on what you said is that, we're really just looking at the nutrition aspects. There could be more information there if we decided and asked the customers if it would be okay to do that. But we're not going into the heavy route of the disease states, or are you predisposed for X, Y or Z? Personally, I choose not to know that sort of thing. But I think that we kept it safer exactly for that reason. I can tell you, you might be lactose intolerant or you might have a gluten sensitivity issue. We tell you what macronutrients work best for your body. But it's not something that is going to cause you any concern down the road in terms of information. Actually it really helps you get on course, and know what's right for your body.

Christopher Reichert: Interesting. So tell me, coming back to Sloan, you have a Master's in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and an MBA.

Dawn Zier: Yes, so [Course] VI and XV.

Christopher Reichert: VI and XV. Excellent, love that for MIT talk.

Dawn Zier: Yes.

Christopher Reichert: How did you get into those and how did you evolve into the MBA? Or did it all happen at once? Tell me about that journey.

Dawn Zier:  It was separate. I went to SUNY Stony Brook undergrad, and got my Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Then, I worked at AT&T, and it was back in the day when companies would pay for you to go back to school. Any school that you could get into, you could go to. I applied to MIT and got in, and they paid for my Master's in Electrical Engineering.

What I realized not so far thereafter, is that that wasn't really my passion. I love the math. I love the science. I would say that those experiences taught me how to think. The way I problem solve is very different from the way my Chief Marketing Officer problem solves. So I go left, she goes right. If we somehow end up at the same answer, pretty sure it's right.

Christopher Reichert: Right.

Dawn Zier: I like to joke with her, when it's not right, we know where to look. Anyway, but I realized it wasn't my passion to be an engineer. But it was foundational for me. Then I decided, "Okay, I want to go back to business school, where do I want to go?" I wanted to go to a place that I felt would leverage my analytical background and would prepare me for things that I wanted to do. One of the things I'm known for is the facts-based culture, always going back to those data analytics. Sloan was actually the perfect place for me. It was a smaller business school, but the best out there, and really was a good place for me to come back to. I always have an affinity for being back up here in Cambridge.

Christopher Reichert: I'm trying to remember the acronym for FACTS. Was it Focus, Accountability, Customer-centric, and Team-oriented?

Dawn Zier: Right, and then Solution-based.

Christopher Reichert: And Solution-based. Hey that could actually be the ‘S’ that's almost like the “Fast Five.”

Dawn Zier: Oh, Fast Five.

Christopher Reichert: It looks very similar.

Dawn Zier: Yes, Fast Five actually was great for us. That was the first campaign we came out with that the team had worked, it takes about a year to form a campaign. So that was our 2014 campaign, and it was about losing five pounds in one week, and it really caught the attention of the consumers. It was clinically-based. Then we grew from there with Turbo 10, which was one month, and then Lean 13, we made some tweaks and actually found that customers could lose up to 13 pounds in one week. That was how we were growing the business. Then we introduced some new elements like the DNA Body Blueprint.

But one thing with dieting or weight loss, the weight loss industry, is it's tricky, because it's about health and wellness, and you don't really want to talk too much about losing weight. But at the end of the day, the way people measure themselves is by the weight loss. So it's a little confusing, and there's a lot of sensitivity in terms of how you have to address it out there.

Christopher Reichert: Yes, it's an obvious metric.

Dawn Zier: Right.

Christopher Reichert: So that's the one that people go to, and probably the one that makes you fit in your clothing better, whether or not you're fitter or not is another one. I learned a new term when I was researching you, one called the “doorstep economy.”

Dawn Zier: Doorstep economy, yes.

Christopher Reichert: So that's the packages delivered on your doorstep, I guess?

Dawn Zier: We don't want to move anymore, right? Movement is such an important part of our health but “Please just deliver everything to my doorstep.” So you just open the door and sweep it right in, or better yet, “Why don't you just come into my kitchen and stock it for me?”

Christopher Reichert: Right.

Dawn Zier: But yes, the doorstep economy. So, what we feel is that, looking at the way Nutrisystem has always been a product delivered into the home, very akin to the way Amazon has really transformed our industry, and we like to say we were there before that doing it. What's interesting is that, while in the past certain people accepted food into the home, now everybody welcomes it. So there was a macro change that actually I think is helpful to what we do.

Christopher Reichert: It's also, different to takeout. It's more of the cooking or heating.

Dawn Zier: Right, exactly.

Christopher Reichert: As opposed to each meal being delivered individually. It's like a plan.

Dawn Zier: It's a plan. It's a system and it's easy, because one of the things we're trying to address is the busy-ness of the lifestyle. What we're finding is, these customers that get into these situations where they want to lose the weight, they often don't have the time to really do the meal prep, or they would have been doing that already. So it really is about easy and convenient.

Christopher Reichert: Do you think you're going to add the JD's Triple B? Bacon, crumbled bleu.

Dawn Zier: I'm looking at the loaded mac and cheese. But I think Sharon, my food development person, would kill me if I suggested that.

Christopher Reichert: Frizzled onion straws. Thank you, MaGerks. That's great stuff.

Dawn Zier: It's good. That is a good place.

Christopher Reichert: Tell us about your time at Sloan. Do you have a favorite Sloan memory or anything you would want to do over?

Dawn Zier: I loved my time at Sloan. Not to date myself, I went to our 25th reunion and didn't quite realize where I fell into the crowd. We always have our little study groups, and that's where you have your tight relationship. What I didn't realize at the time, was that I was the one that was the serious one, and always kept everybody on-task. It was funny to hear that, because they're like, "Oh yeah, we would just give you the stuff. You'd get the work done." It really was a big team effort, but I never knew. Now in leadership, you know where you fall into everything. It was interesting to see where my friends actually put me in that. That was an interesting revelation at our 25^th, actually 20th. 25th? I don't remember, I'm not going to date myself. But anyway, it was an interesting revelation.

But one of the memories I have of Sloan and my husband, who was not my husband at the time, but I was dating him, reminds me of is Professor Yates. Joanne Yates’ Communication and Presentation course. Apparently I was abysmal. This is when you actually have to prepare for the presentation. They then record you. They then send you the video.

Christopher Reichert: And you cringe, right?

Dawn Zier: I made the mistake of actually sharing it with my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband. He's like, "Oh God, you're awful at this." Very supportive there. I look back, and that was really my first experience at doing public speaking. Now I've been trained. I'm obviously much more comfortable with it. But I look at the kids today. My daughter is a rising senior at college, my son is a graduate, and they've had all this public speaking experience, to a much greater extent than I did when I came to Sloan. So I looked back at that course and think, "Okay, I probably could've done a better job there." And it terrified me.

Christopher Reichert: Right. That's a good thing, maybe, in hindsight?

Dawn Zier: But you evolve, right? It's good. I talk to my communications people when I go out doing TV or media, and it's something you never take lightly. You never can not prepare. That's something that I've taken with me, I think from that experience, I always make sure that I am prepared. I don't know that it's a do-over. I think it was a ... probably got a late start at it.

Christopher Reichert: So, in your travels with Reader's Digest, and I don't know if you traveled much with Nutrisystems, did you make a point of visiting classmates in different cities and countries around the world?

Dawn Zier: Well, we're all over the world. So I would run into a couple of people in London. I remember probably at Reader's Digest, my most exciting time was when I went to Moscow. That was just a surreal experience. It was brilliant. But with Nutrisystem, I was going to Detroit, Cleveland, other places. Reader's Digest travels was a lot more exciting.

Christopher Reichert: So, you've had a lot of success. We read your bio earlier on. What's your definition of success?

Dawn Zier: It's interesting, because as much as I am an executive, I place my life in three buckets. It's family, it's work, and it's friends. If any two are working well at one time, I'm set. I'm ready to go. If two are off-kilter, forget it. It becomes really tough. But I actually, and maybe this is cliché, but the way I define my success is through my children. Have I taught them to be responsible adults? Have I taught them not to be entitled? Have I taught them to, with my husband, to be productive citizens going forward? No longer is the definition just a U.S. citizen. It's really a citizen of the world. That's how I think of myself. One of the gifts I think I've been able to give my kids is through that Reader's Digest experience, of really being able to see the world at a young age, and appreciate that. When you go through your career, there's lots of ups and downs and I don't think you can really define yourself by any one minute. Sometimes you're on the top, sometimes you're not. It's a cycle, and things happen. If you define yourself by that as “success,” you're probably not going to be too happy. So I try to look for other things. But I've been fortunate with my career, also.

Christopher Reichert: Yes, absolutely. Between the EE and the CS and then the MBA, was there a gap in between? Was that when you went to Chase?

Dawn Zier: I went, got my undergrad degree, and then worked, went right away for my Master's here, then two years at AT&T, and then went up to business school, and ended up here.

Christopher Reichert: Interesting. When you think back on the education you got at Sloan, and thinking about the relevance of an MBA degree, what sort of thoughts would you have for prospective students on choosing a school, but also deciding whether to go and get a Master's degree in business administration or not?

Dawn Zier: I think right now, everything is so analytically driven and data-oriented, and I think Sloan always had that as part of their DNA, in terms of teaching us as leaders how to be analytical and really dissect problems. If anything, over time I think that's gotten more and more relevant. Everything we talk about, and I look at my career as a direct-to-consumer marketer at a time when I was doing it, being a brand marketer was more important, was more prevalent and more recognized, more prestigious, if you will. But my passion was always about that direct to consumer and really, that geek in me of wanting to know that what I was doing actually could be measured and I could see the results. Now what I'm seeing is, and it's a balance, so one extreme versus the other is not good, but what I'm seeing is this more analytical approach to business actually is now what all the brands are looking for. I think the way that Sloan taught, and I'm sure that the other business schools are doing it as well now, but I think Sloan was pretty unique in its time, in terms of how it was doing that. For me, it was a great background.

Christopher Reichert: I'm looking at the brands of Tivity Health. You've got Silver Sneakers, which was part of Tivity prior, right?

Dawn Zier: Yes.

Christopher Reichert:   So, the Nutrisystem purchase brought over Nutrisystem, South Beach Diet, and the DNA Body Blueprint. What about the whole health living? What tipped it over to, “this makes sense to merge” or to purchase or whatever?

Dawn Zier: Right, so I think what made sense is that first off, the Chronic Care Act. Plans were now able to reimburse for nutrition-based products, and that really hadn't happened to a large extent before. Also, the plans are looking for not disjointed solutions. They're looking for somebody that can provide a holistic solution for them. I think for the CEO of Tivity, Donato, he was looking for a company that could complete that calories in versus calories out, and would give expansion in terms of, “How can we better serve seniors?” It's not just about the exercise. There's more that we can do, and how do we become a platform for offering these different opportunities to the senior community?

For me, as the CEO of Nutrisystem, what I was looking for was to partner with a company that could get us more into the health and wellness space, and provide opportunities for other forms of distribution. Not just TV or digital advertising, which we are experts at, but really building those relationships with the health plans. What we've combined is a sales organization, which is Tivity, and a marketing organization, which is Nutrisystem. There’re opportunities to use all of our skillsets in a much more robust way. What I like, I think the thing that cemented the deal across both companies, is we're both mission-based. Both companies were mission-based in terms of really wanting to help transform people's lives. Whether it be making sure seniors can stay active and have more vitality in their lives, to Nutrisystem, which is transforming people's lives through weight loss, which really does make a difference.

Christopher Reichert: What's next? It's been since March probably when it all came together.

Dawn Zier: Yes.

Christopher Reichert: This association with AgeLab here at MIT, how do you see the next couple of years panning out with the Tivity?

Dawn Zier: Yes, I think there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon. Again, how do we offer those more holistic solutions to seniors? I think redefining Nutrisystem not only as a weight-loss company, but what we are is a food science company or nutrition-based company. Certainly from the consumer end, we will still be focusing very, very heavily on weight loss, no pun intended there. But we'll also have the ability to develop different products for chronic conditions. We already have a diabetic product, but you can envision there's a lot more that we can do for people who suffer chronic conditions, and that might be reimbursable through the different health plans and also post-discharge.

I can see things down the road, elder care, caregiver, things like that. Then of course, we'll continue to do what we do in weight loss. But for me, what the acquisition has done is really expand our horizons of what we can do, and we can do it more quickly because we came together as one unit.

Christopher Reichert: Do the noises out of Washington with the Affordable Care Act and changes in the overall health regulatory environment, does that weigh on decisions of products that Tivity offers? Or do you think you really can't put the genie back in the bottle after people understand food is an essential component of health?

Dawn Zier: I think what we're seeing as the aging boomers become seniors, we've moved more into an environment where the aging boomers are demanding more choice. I think that plays well for the position that we're in. Then of course, we're watching different things out there, Medicare for all, and all of those things, how that plays out. I think something like that would be actually a long shot. It's probably going to be something much more ... it's interesting. I'm sure it's years off with the way-

Christopher Reichert: Right, before something-

Dawn Zier: ... with the way we move these days.

Christopher Reichert: Last question. Any parting advice for prospective Sloanies?

Dawn Zier: Oh, I would say again, for me, it was one of the best experiences I've had in my life. It refined the way that I thought. It made me a critical thinker, and I think the way Sloan blends the process of learning about business, but also putting that analytical slant on it, really is great. I think being part of a smaller business school, a renowned business school, but one that you kind of know everybody in your class, is a great place to be. So five stars I'd say. Sign up, but hard to get in.

Christopher Reichert: Absolutely. With that, I think we're going to order 30 of the gold rush wings, maybe a Ninth Street chicken, and I saw some in here, cheesecake egg rolls. What do you think, you want to share those?

Dawn Zier: Yes, we can share those. That'll be good.

Christopher Reichert: Yes.

Dawn Zier: Then, I'll ship you some Nutrisystem for the following week. It'll be good. It's all good.

Christopher Reichert: Thank you very much to Dawn Zier for joining us on Sloanies Talking with Sloanies

Dawn Zier: Pleasure to be here. Thanks!

Christopher Reichert: Sloanies Talking with Sloanies is produced by the Office of External Relations at MIT Sloan School of Management. You can subscribe to this podcast by visiting our website, mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Support for this podcast comes in part from the MIT Sloan Annual Fund, which provides essential, flexible funding, to assure that our community can pursue excellence. Make your gift today by visiting giving.mit.edu/sloan.