b'C E L E B R A T I N G 7 0 Y E A R S9 5 2-20 2 Tim Sander1 2A SCOA Executive Vice President & Chief Administrative Officer, N DDB N GM of Human Resources GroupOYEIn all the time youve been in SCOA, how has your role grown and how has the company grown in tandem? That is a very interesting and insightful question you raise. Because organiza-tional growth and employee growth are so interrelated, I believe an organization can only effectively grow if the individual employees who dedicate so much of their valuable time to its operation are also growing, both personally and pro-fessionally.It is a symbiotic relationship. As an organization expands in scope and complexity, it can offer increasingly dynamic opportunities for its employ-ees to learn through new experiences. This is not just a matter of growing the organizations size or an employees capacity to do more work. Most importantly, an organization and its employees must grow qualitatively, which means that they must expand their capacity to embody and effectuate the values they hold. My role has grown over the many years I have worked for SCOA. In fact, my relationship with the Sumitomo organization started in 1996 before I ever became a SCOA employee. At that time I was a temporary employee working for the Legal Department in SC Japan.When I started, I never imagined I would even become a permanent employee. In fact, my former boss who referred me to the position told me that if I take the position I should do so without any expectation of becoming a permanent employee because he said that this would be highly unlikely. Although his words may sound like they were unnecessarily dis-couraging given how my career unfolded, I believe he was just trying to be honest and transparent to help me evaluate the two-year contract opportunity. So I like to tell people that I am just a temporary employee who never left and strangely find myself still here after 26 years and counting. After starting my work for SCOAs Legal Department in 1998, I anticipated that I would remain in the Legal Department until I retired. I did not think it was possible for me to do anything else, and I expected that the highest position I could ever reach would be Deputy GM of Legal. However, I eventually became GM of Legal and Compliance in 2013. Then, SCOAs former President Shingo Ueno appointed me as an Executive Vice President and Board Member in 2018, and SCOA President Masaki Nakajima appointed me as Chief Administrative Officer in April 2019. At this time, I was taken aback by his decision and by some of the reactions from other employees both in the US and around the world.I can understand them because it was the first time SCOA ever appointed a local employee as an executive. As with other execu-tive positions, SC Tokyo announced the position to other overseas offices around the world in Japanese so I needed to provide a Japanese translation of my name. After the announcement, a Japanese colleague of mine in the Legal Department told me that an employee in another overseas office sought clarification by sending an email to SCOA asking what does this mean? I thought it was a very appropriate question because I wondered the same thing at the time. Circum-stances seemed to provide an answer when SCOAs GM of HR left in July 2019.So my role expanded to assume responsibility for Human Resources. At the time when I also became GM of HR in July 2019, I re-member some employees questioning whether I would only become the interim GM of HR. Thankfully, this was not the case because I have thoroughly enjoyed leading the HR function, recognizing how important our employees are to our business operations. So as I reflect on my own career thus far, I have certainly acquired various types of professional knowledge. However, my most important personal and professional growth has been internal and emotional. Like all our other employees, I confront challenges and changes through my work and seek to make good judgments in making decisions. I am sure many other employees can probably relate to my feelings when I say that the longer I work at SCOA, the more I grow in appreciation for my colleagues who have helped me tackle the challenges I have had to face. We all depend on each other for our success.8 visions Fall 2022'