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THE ART OF COMMUNICATION
Sally Susman and the power of engagement.
interview by Jonathan Soroff
photography by Kit Noble
event photos courtesy of Sally Susman
"There are five things I always wanted to be,” Sally Susman says. “A wife, a mother, a business boss lady, a New Yorker and an author. Author was elusive until now.” With the publication in March of her Wall Street Journal bestseller Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Change the World, Susman has now realized all five of her goals. “Having your first book published is thrilling for someone who always wanted to write,” she says. “As a child, I wanted to be an investigative reporter.”
Instead, she went to work on Capitol Hill before moving to New York City, where she worked for American Express and Estée Lauder. Today, she is the chief corporate affairs officer at Pfizer as well as vice chair of the Pfizer Foundation. A summer resident of Nantucket for 50 years, she’s been vacationing on the island since childhood with her parents—her father was a lawyer, banker and the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s while her mother was involved in civic causes. Today, Susman continues to summer on the island at her family’s Nantucket home, with the addition of her wife and their young daughter. “The first time I brought my wife here, she loved it even more than I do,” she says. “Now Robin and I have been together 35 years, and we joke that she’s the mayor of the island. She knows everything that’s going on.”
The couple spends time on Nantucket in the off-season as well. “It’s just so beautiful and peaceful,” Susman says. “My favorite time to be on Nantucket is the fall. Wearing sweaters, in pursuit of cranberry bogs…the light and air are just extraordinary.” But what drew her family to the island initially was the allure of the East Coast. “Being from the Midwest, it was an eye-opener,” she says, regarding her childhood visits. “I learned about salty air and baskets on bicycles. The gentle rhythm of being on an island. Nantucket opened my mind to another way of living in the world.”
Growing up, Susman was ingrained with the typical Midwest values of rising early, working hard and treating people with respect, but she explains that her parents also ingrained her with a sense of curiosity and a need to engage with the world. “Spending time on Nantucket was a big part of those lessons,” she says. This, among other reasons, was why a book signing in August at Mitchell’s Book Corner was particularly special. She adds, “I’ve been buying books there for decades, and it’s a very important place for me.”
As for Breaking Through, its premise is that “communication is an essential quality or discipline for leaders of any kind—CEOs, politicians, whatever. I’ve worked with nine CEOs, in addition to cabinet secretaries, senators and other influential leaders. The game changers all prioritized and excelled at communicating effectively,” Susman explains. In summary, the central argument is that communication is often mistaken as a soft skill rather than a rock-hard competency. Before joining Pfizer in 2007, Susman functioned in several senior communications and government relations roles at Estée Lauder and American Express, and earlier in her career, she spent almost a decade in government service.
While she had been conceptualizing the book for nearly four decades, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to bring it together on the page. “The book is the culmination of my ideas about communications and leadership,” she explains. “It was forged in the cauldron of the pandemic, which gave me a clarity and quietness from working at home.” While Pfizer scrambled to develop what would prove to be an effective vaccine, Susman, along with her CEO and several others, were the front-facing people, and she says, “It was especially interesting, because I connected with a whole new set of stakeholders. It wasn’t just medical people who were interested. It was the whole world.”
Her book opens with the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine and the difficult decision Pfizer faced in whether to pull business out of Russia, as many consumer companies were doing. In the end, the company resolved the dilemma by continuing a humanitarian supply of medicines to Russia, but directing profits from business in the country to supporting the Ukrainian people. “My passion—and my goal—is to give people the tools they need to disagree agreeably. To open them up to the idea that maybe the other side is at least partially right,” she says, adding, “I admire diplomacy a great deal. It’s in short supply these days, and it’s one of the most important things we’re missing.”
When not executing her considerable responsibilities at Pfizer or promoting her book, she serves as co-chair of the board of the International Rescue Committee, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is also on the board of UL Solutions. However, she always carves out time to spend on Nantucket, where you can probably find her at her home on Capaum Pond, with its stunning water views of both the pond and the ocean. “It’s a really special spot,” she says. “When I’m on Nantucket, walking the Tupancy Links or Sanford Farm, it’s just stunning.”
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