Copyright American City Business Journals Oct 05, 2001Janet Reid started her career in the chemistry field, but it was "people chemistry" that turned out to be her life's work.
"I needed to unify myself," said the partner in Global Lead Management Consulting of her career change. "I wanted to take what talents I've been given and combine them with my purpose in life - to bring people together."
Reid did that by leaving Procter & Gamble, where she had spent 10 years, first in product development and then in advertising, to found J.B. Reid and Associates in 1988. That company was later merged to form Global Lead. The management consulting firm specializes in executive consulting, team building, diversity and corporate culture changes.
And what brings people together? "First self-interest," Reid said. Employees want to be more productive or advance in the workplace. "But then they also realize that the company benefits," she said, "and they benefit too."
Global Lead, based in Roselawn, has consulted with large clients like Procter & Gamble, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, The Limited Inc., Ethicon EndoSurgery and Federated Department Stores. The next arena, Reid said, is medium-size and small businesses, which might just be beginning to realize that their success depends on how well their people work together.
"In a small business, there's no room for relationships that don't work," she said.
A native of Detroit, Reid earned a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in chemistry. She was an instructor in chemistry at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Va., before joining P&G. Her hobby is scuba diving, and she recently spent a vacation diving in the Turks and Caicos islands with her 23-year-old daughter, who is working on her doctorate in psychology at the University of Illinois. Her son, 22, is a student at Pratt Institute of Art in New York.
Reid holds numerous board seats, including the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, Cincinnati 2012, the Collaborative Law Center, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, Cincinnati CAN and the YWCA of Cincinnati.
And when all the meetings and seminars are over, Reid said, what she likes the best is getting away from it all, sitting in the woods near her house.
"That's the real deal," she said. "Just me and the birds and the spiders."