January 2003
INSIDE
INSIDE
lZoner shopping list sure has changed
Medication Impact
Several popularly prescribed drugs affect insulin levels
Ask Lynn
Lynn Sears, a woman who doesn't really like to cook, had to change her
ways after her husband created the Zone dietary philosophy.
Contact us
What would you like to see more or less of in future e-magazines. E-mail
your suggestions to newsletter@drsears.com
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| Barry Sears and George Jochum are pictured at the recent Sears Labs Christmas party. |
| George
Jochum, who will soon mark his first anniversary as CEO of Sears Labs,
brings a long history of successful business experience to the company.
He worked for Western Union for 32 years, where he advanced in managerial
responsibilities over the years. “I am self-taught. The highest degree I have is an equivalent to an AA, but my experience brought me a wealth of education in the different elements of management,” Jochum said. He started out in California as a shop repair maintenance person, which he said “is about as low as you can start,” repairing stock tickers. Within 18 months he was promoted to senior technician and moved into management five years later. From there, the promotions kept on coming – junior supervisor, first supervisors’ assistant, San Francisco district manager with nine states under his responsibility, assistant vice president of quality control in New York, vice president of the Government System Division, area vice president in Chicago. “Before I had dealt with the technical world. Now I managed all of Western Union’s business in the state of Illinois,” he said. His next promotion brought him to New York as the president of the portion of Western Union’s business that sold stock market information to banks. Bank officials would be able to load a tape on their computers to see how much money was made or lost. “That’s the kind of information we would collect for them, and we also had bond models that identified the worth of thinly traded bonds. Seventy five of the top 100 banks were my customers,” he said. “The company represented about one-third of Western Union’s income. Those were tough times for the company because the telegram was dying so this new company was a gold mine.” Jochum said a long-time chairman of Western Union had always been his sponsor. When he retired, Jochum got what he calls his first “demotion.” “We got a new chairman, a Harvard graduate, and he decided I wasn’t the right person to be in New York dealing with these financial gurus. He wanted someone educated in the financial world. He wanted to bring in his own man,” Jochum said. But his new Western Union assignment added a new dimension to his management skills. He was made the manager of Technical Facilities in Manhattan at a Western Union division that he said had tremendous labor problems. “The union president called me the first day on the job and said he was going to shut the place down. I went to his office. This was the first time a Western Union manager had gone to the union’s office,” he said. When Jochum was a senior technician early in his career, he was also shop |