TRANSKRIPTIO 🔗
Michael Collins: welcome Our guest today is Ben Yrun Ostapuk. He is a corporate legal executive with over two decades of experience. began his career at leading law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden. Ben transitioned to corporate and ultimately became the VP head of technology and innovation after 15 years at Intel. Today, he is the chief legal officer at pegasystems. and serves on the NYU School of Law Innovation Law and Policy Advisory Board. Ben, welcome.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: Thank you very much for having me.
Michael Collins: Would you please start by summarizing your career journey? What led you to law school, working outside council, and then ultimately transitioning to become a corporate legal executive?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: Yeah, sure. So, I'm actually a frustrated scientist. I was super excited to enroll at Cornell, which at the time had like the number three ranked undergrad physics program in the country. And then I got there and kind of hit the wall in my math. and science abilities, And so I ended up graduating with a bachelor's in philosophy. knew I wanted to do grad school of some sort. Both my parents had gone to law school, so that was kind of a obvious option and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to go to Stanford Law. And then after Stanford, I kind of started in public interest and criminal defense law. ultimately pivoted to big firm practice and getting into IP law gave me an opportunity to sort of reconnect with my first science love in a very satisfying way. And then after spending over a decade doing big firm, patent trial litigation, had the qualifications to join Intel's in-house litigation team. And then when I got to Intel, was sort of lucky enough to have some great mentors and sponsor that gave me amazing opportunities to develop into a business executive who happens to have a legal background.
Michael Collins: That is incredible. What was that transition like moving from those great leading law firms to being inside of a big brand like Intel?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I think in a lot of ways you gotta have that outside counsel foundation, but then you're really learning how to do something that's pretty substantially different when you're an in-house lawyer than what you were doing as outside counsel. And so there absolutely is a transition process.
Michael Collins: That's great. Is it true you needed a science background to work in certain IP or patent practices?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: there's two very distinct schools of thought firms, sort of business model operate under firms that are like, if you don't have a PhD in that science don't even bother because they market their lawyers to their clients having that specialization. another school of thought that's like, Hey, look, at the end of the day, you've got to be translating these very complicated. concepts to judges and juries that don't have any of that background. I was fortunate, Skadden and Kirkland had that latter mindset. And so was able to sort of, carve out playing a translation function where I understood enough the scientists were saying, but was like enough to kind of figure out ways to describe those things in persuasive ways. And that's kind of like the niche that I carved out in my career.
Michael Collins: must have been such a learning curve, how did you get to Intel? Was it like a headhunter or were you purposely looking for a certain set of technology companies that you were intellectually curious about or?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: So they were a significant Kirkland client. And was recruited to join the team when they had an opening. So it really was a client-based transition.
Michael Collins: What do think that management saw in you throughout your career that ultimately helped you advance to where you are now?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: So, for me personally, was ultimately the ability to lead through chaos and turn, disruption into direction. my opportunity to demonstrate my ability to be that person came through my big ticket litigation experience and then, once you demonstrate that brand, you get opportunities to apply those skills to an increasing range of circumstances. the more experience you get, the better you are at applying those skills to yet new environments. And it sort of becomes a positive cycle.
Michael Collins: It's fantastic. what are big misconceptions about the corporate legal practice, maybe among board members, executives, peer departments that you're interfacing with?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I would say one of the things that really relates to that is, what it is that you do. that you sit and wait for the phone to ring, kind of stuff. Whereas, the role really has evolved a lot over the years and, really helping executive teams and boards navigate strategy, risk and growth Now, obviously that's going to vary at different stages of your in-house career, like in your first job, you maybe will be asked to do a lot of more narrow legal advice. But at the end of the day, the mature corporate legal team is having inside lawyers that are really bunkered in, kind of shoulder to shoulder with the business, really know the business deeply, have their deep relationships with the members of the business.
Michael Collins: I've noticed a few of the CLOs that we've gotten to meet. They are much more deeply involved in the product or service or industry than I expected. I thought with what's on their plate, with their core responsibilities, that it wouldn't necessarily be a part of strategy and corp dev and strategic decisions for the board and whatnot. But it was seen a couple that have pivoted to strategy roles that have worked on major deals. And it just was a surprise to me looking from the outside especially with your IP background, you would have that technical mindset to think deeply about the company that you're a part of.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: the cornerstone of that as a chief legal officer is having an amazing team, that you're working with underneath you
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is incredible at doing that blocking and tackling so that kind of frees your bandwidth to pivot in the other direction.
Michael Collins: How do you think about the differences between a GC and a CLO? Or how do the organizations that you've been a part of approach those differences?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: it's a trend that kind of started to accelerate in the 2010s. And it really is intended to highlight that distinction of from an older model where the back office lawyer, primarily providing legal advice kind to this idea of a true executive leadership team peer that has scope driving business, performance and reputation and overseeing emerging areas like cyber and AI and privacy and ESG. So there's many GCs that were already functioning in that expanded business partner capacity, but it's just now kind of getting, enshrined a little bit more
Michael Collins: What led you to transition out of Intel? You were there for 15 plus years, which feels forever compared to most people nowadays. what brought the opportunity at Pega pegaSystems?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: it just had reached sort of that point where I really was hungry for and prepared for the opportunity to contribute at the CLO level. And, it requires a lot of stars to align, to get that opportunity. And I'm just very fortunate that, Pega was looking for someone that had my background at the time because of the issues that they were facing and made what I was most experienced in highly relevant to them and they were willing to bring in a first time person and willing to have, someone that was learning certain aspects on the job, And I'm super thrilled to have the opportunity here at Pega.
Michael Collins: That's great. How's that been for you personally? How's it been professionally being with the company last year?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: It's been amazing. I can't believe it's been a year already. everything about the experience, the company has just been best case scenario. It's such a warm welcome from the board, the leadership team and all of the employees. It's like a super engaged vibrant place, everybody's just amazing. The cross country move has been substantial, just kind of transition experience. Boston is an environment that you penetrate slowly. So we're kind of going through that, but also really enjoying Boston. And there's so much stuff to do out here that we haven't done yet. So we have like a list of things we'd like to explore and experience in the area. So we're really grateful that the place that I got the opportunity is such a thriving and important area as Boston is.
Michael Collins: Yeah, that's great. How is the role and the corporate legal work that you've been a part of changed over the course of your career? there's the COVID, post pandemic remote work, folks being in office where you are now, all of the mega investment that firms outside council have made in building or buying some of these leading unicorn AI providers. What are some other trends or things that you've majorly seen impact corporate legal work?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: so in terms of my role, it's like a lot of those things that you mentioned are kind of experiential differences or kind of logistical differences. think, again, the big headline is just sort of making that transition from formal legal question answers to helping exec teams and boards navigate strategy and that's just obviously a lot different than what was expected of me at an earlier time in my career. But you can't get to that spot until you've gone through that journey of like being really good at answering the formal legal questions and like getting a brand and reputation for how you think and what judgment you apply and what kind of person you are and are you reliable and are you trustworthy and are you ethical and all of those kinds of things. over time that kind of builds and opens more doors for you So there's a lot of different seasons that happened to you and getting as much out of those experiences and those phases as you can. Cause that'll ultimately helps you progress until like a next season.
Michael Collins: is you observed any changes in the way that corporate legal teams interact with outside counsel through your career? I hear some things generally in the news, but I don't know how much of that is universal or substantive.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: To me, the bedrock of the in-house council, outside council relationship is the relationship. It's building those long-term relationships where people have your back, The very good outside council are in incredible demand. getting those really excellent practitioners to prioritize your work against all the other stuff that they have, And if you're hopping from firm to firm by whoever will handle a matter for you at the lowest cost in any given day. you're never really building, deep relationships.
Michael Collins: Is there a lot of variance in the way that CLOs or GCs approach what's done in-house versus using the outside counsel? Or do you see a pretty consistent theme of how that's divvied up across corporations?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: if you're a US based company, I think there are definitely certain sectors of the law, like bodies based limitations on what you can do in house versus what you're doing through outside counsel litigation is really challenging actually handle litigation as an in house department, because you typically just don't have the scale to do that. There are areas where after just a couple of years, you've sort of gotten the training you need. from the law firm to be able to make that in-house and really be doing that same work on the in-house team. And then there's other areas where you need a lot more experience as a litigator.
Michael Collins: Do other factors like the industry, the product, the service, the global scale of an organization affect the role of the CLO or GC? Or is it pretty consistent across different products and services industries and all?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I would
say in some ways, like an excellent CLO or an GC should be able to apply their meta skills and techniques to thrive in any environment or in any industry. If it's like completely brand new to you transitionalized, then maybe you're going to have a little longer ramp period, but it should be sort of agnostic in some sense. the industry or the sector can definitely greatly influence what the most critical issues, either business or legal, that are facing the company and who are the key external stakeholders that the CLO needs to be successful with. So maybe think about what's the life cycle that the company is in. So even across different industries, a CLO's prior experience with those events can be as important as experience with the industry or sector. So a lot of it is what moment in time are you approaching that company in? And what are the most important things that they need? Some of those are going to be sector industry driven, and some of those are going to be, life cycle.
Michael Collins: Whether a company is publicly traded or not, is that also another dynamic like those in the complexity or where boards are looking for a CLO that's had publicly traded company experience?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: Absolutely. And if you're a private company, if you're getting ready to go public, had a CLO or a GC that has experience taking companies public or like seed round activities or kind of life cycle stuff is super important. then, there's a lot of additional compliance and other things that go into public company responsibilities.
Michael Collins: How do the board and executives measure the success of a CLO role? How is it typically done? maybe you've seen other ways that companies have approached it.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: Yeah, I would say, they're looking for true business partners. They're looking for people that are going to help accelerate the business, not just defend it. executives and boards want CLOs or senior lawyers that are going to help them manage risk, but aren't looking to like literally eliminate risk because that's generally counterproductive for the enterprise. I'd say definitely they're looking for nimbleness, ability to respond or react to change and sort of the inevitable new that is going to be coming around. I'd say they're looking for people that are going to be sought after as a true counselor on a broad range of issues that are not legal. And the training for this and the reason that the CLO or the GC becomes that person is really because of how the law makes you think. they become valued for their judgment, ability to see around corners, thoughtfulness. So all that stuff ends up being very important. I would say execs and boards are also looking for global experiences for most enterprises these days. protecting the company from legal risk and providing legal advice is sort of like the table stakes. It's certainly necessary, but that's definitely not kind of what the whole envelope looks like.
Michael Collins: Sometimes the executive looking for a legal leader that's, you their conciliatory, their right-hand advisor on things for good judgment. And like you said, not just necessarily for the legal aspects. Older corporate legal practices that you think remain underrated or newer tools or assumptions that maybe you think are overhyped.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: You know, it's hard to talk about new tools and overhype without talking about AI. I'd say it's
Michael Collins: Absolutely.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: obviously critical to evaluate and deploy and to stay on pace with this technology as it develops. I'd say, on the underrated front, maybe it's not limited to corporate legal, but maybe more generally, good old fashioned, human provided expert legal advice. I'd say there could be negative talk you hear about like how the practice of law doesn't evolve or change fast enough or it's stodgy or it's not being done like materially different enough than it used to be. But I would just say at its most fundamental level when it's done right, like there's a reason why it's considered. an indispensable feature of running an enterprise and it is a human activity.
Michael Collins: How do you think about external relationships? Are there associations or groups or informal peer relationships with other CLOs that are helpful in talking through common challenges or anything like that?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I think that is really an important facet of like the overall picture for a successful CLO or GC or any version of senior in-house practitioner. I neglected that for a very long time, for a good chunk of my Intel career. I was just sort of like head down and busy and had plenty to do and learning a ton just inside company and I was like zipping around all over the place doing all this globe-drawing and so I didn't make a lot of time or space for that. You know the last CLO that I worked for at Intel like opened up some opportunities for me to participate in some of those. There's an organization called World 50 and I had a chance to do some programs with them. I did some stuff with the conference board for their like senior IP practitioners. I think all of those kinds of things are really, really valuable ways to like get outside the echo chamber, hear from thought leaders, hear about stuff that maybe doesn't even like super directly tied to what you're doing day to day, just kind of broadens your perspective and broadens your horizon allows you to like think about things from like a higher level of generality. I haven't yet sort of reintegrated with any of those organizations in my new role. I've been again, sort of focused on the kind of first year at Pega and had plenty of internal directed stuff to do, but I'm really excited about sort of reconnecting with those kinds of resources.
Michael Collins: That's great. What's been a particularly memorable event in your legal career? A crisis, victory, war stories, anything that you can share that you think about even today?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: the many things I learned from the global patent litigation docket that I was leading at Intel, took me to Germany that transitioned into like an expat rotation there, the cases that took me to China, the out of court strategies that brought me into contact with regulators and government agencies all over the world that got me involved in managing a government affairs team for the first time in my career that got me into managing a public relations functions I had some notable incidents that included, figuring out how we were going to respond to a $2 billion trial loss that got handed down about seven weeks into the tenure of a new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, when I was at Intel. And, you know, that was a very interesting
Michael Collins: My goodness.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: way to meet a new CEO and, having like a, not quite a bet the company, but like a third of our annual revenue injunction case litigating against a Chinese state-owned enterprise like in courts in China. these are things that all involve a lot of three-dimensional chess. And, you kind of start as a litigator doing litigation and suddenly it becomes like a much bigger horizon than that. And I would say like in particular, the international experiences were really valuable in terms of just like seeing how to bring, litigation that's copending in the US and Germany and China all at the same time. you've hired the right firm for each of those matters and you're trying to like kind of conduct that overall orchestra and kind of harmonize things, but also not sort of suffocate the individual things that those individual lawyers want to do to like prevail in those cases. So to really get the best out of that, you gotta, learn how to interact in different modes and learn how to resolve tensions between different players and, all of that kind of stuff. only an in-house role that's going to give you that international scope. And I think that's one of the coolest things of the in-house role is that it kind of like breaks the borders open for you. It's just sort of a different space when you're operating on the client side than when you're operating on the service provider side.
Michael Collins: hearing you unpack that there can't be another space or a handful of companies that has the greatest overlap of all these mega trends of geopolitics, AI, technology, race and war and all these supply chain challenges and competitive dynamics globally.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: it was great, PEGA got its own version of that. It's been really satisfying to transition someplace that is like at the cutting edge of AI technology and all of the SaaS apocalypse, narrative and all the indeterminacy and disruption about all software companies going to go extinct and is claw just going to be able to do, everything by itself and, So I feel like I've been very fortunate to participate in those two sectors, semiconductor. and AI both at these times of like incredible disruption. kind of like trying to turn that into direction and strategy has sort of unintentionally become something I'm doing on a serial basis. And it's a really interesting opportunity to get to be doing that.
Michael Collins: are there any legal risks that you think that companies generally underestimate today?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I think the way that I would frame that probably is that a lot of what good legal departments do is keep bad things from happening. And sort of like the blessing and the curse of that is that once you've been successful at that for a while, it's easy for the enterprise to think that good outcomes are either easy or inevitable. And then, they can begin to focus more on why are we spending so many resources on this? And, is that risk really real? Like we're probably going to defeat this. That's really not that big a deal. that can start to end down a line where things get sort of reduced to the point where you do cross a line where bad things happen. And that kind of wakes people up to the fact that the goodness isn't inevitable. And then suddenly there's like a bunch of resources that go to the function I've seen that across a whole bunch of different flavors of legal risk. So it's just kind of more of that institutional pattern.
Michael Collins: That's so cool. I've never heard that dynamic described, but yet it sounds like a macro of human nature. And it's just this repeating cycle of civilization and tragedy.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: very hard to prove a negative. Like, I
Michael Collins: Yeah.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: kept a bad thing from happening. If I hadn't done that, here's what the bad thing would have looked like. And it can just be hard for that to feel tangible to people when you're actively avoiding the harm on an ongoing basis.
Michael Collins: We hear that a lot from chief security officers that we speak with, talking about ROI and value creation in quantitative terms, or at least the attempt to quantify it. What do you think about that? I'm sure a lot of this is situational and qualitative, but are people looking at legal spend as a percentage of revenue and number of incidents and cases, are those the sorts of things that you're having conversations about, or do you think that's sort of a poor way to encapsulate what the whole department is a part of.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: your department or your company is in a point of its life cycle that you're bringing in the consultants, that's definitely stuff the consultants are going to look at. And that's definitely things the consultants are going to tell your executive leadership team, your metric here doesn't look right. And if you're in a time of scarcity or, time of challenge, then you can expect that there's going to be action taken as a result of those conversations. If you've just recently had a really bad thing happen in the company and everybody's woken up to that risk, then people are probably not going to be very over-indexed on the metrics. They're going to be like, We got
to make sure that this doesn't, happen again. And we're going to write blank checks for, a little bit. and that's just sort of the way it is. So I just think it's very kind of context, dependent.
Michael Collins: I guess you wouldn't call it short-termism, but like that reactionary cycle, you feel it's inevitable that sort of what's been seen throughout history and I'm curious what you think about that and how much control anyone can have over that.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I think it's important to appreciate that legal is just one function in an enterprise. And, there are a lot of like zero sum cost benefit trade-offs that you have to do as an enterprise. I think it's totally understandable when you're thinking at the enterprise level that in a world of scarce resources, there's definitely going to be time that you should be like. pulling that money out in legal and plowing that money into product engineering or R &D or whatever. So there is a little bit of the squeaky wheel ought to get the grease. It's like you can't be like, no, I'm immune and protected at all times no matter what, go knock on somebody else's door. Sometimes you gotta give and sometimes the giving is coming to you Like we're gonna take an optimized risk that's not gonna blow up in our faces and we're all aligned on what that risk is and we're gonna direct, resources somewhere else and that's not an irrational, decision.
Michael Collins: What do you think makes a mature, modern corporate legal function?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: there's lots of companies that don't have their first lawyer yet, right? So when a corporate legal function starts, it's often only a single lawyer or a small group of lawyers. And in that form, the function is sort of running around with their hair on fire. oftentimes serving as like a really busy logistical conduit between the business and outside counsel, because like you don't have any staff, can't do anything inside, but now you at least have a lawyer that can take the instructions from the business people and translate that into lawyer speak and then have the conversation with the outside lawyer. In its more mature form, you populate the department with deep subject matter experts as you get bigger, you're organizing those subject matter experts into like centers of excellence. You've got people who are strongly embedded with the business leaders, who can provide unique and sort of material assistance than is different than what an outside council can provide. that's when you can really start to add some unique value. outside council are paid to be kind of hyper risk averse generally
Michael Collins: are boards and executives ever proactively indicating their risk tolerance level, maybe at a given point in time for the company or the trade-offs that they're thinking about, or is that totally on the legal leadership to feel that out in an organization, understand how risk averse they should be as a result?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: No, it should be a critical part of enterprise strategy. you really ought to be having that. That's a critical part of the discussion at the board level and with the executive leadership team. It's definitely important for the chief legal officer or the GC to be fundamental to surfacing that question and having those discussions and providing useful examples and the questions that help, flesh that out. that's only an answer that can come from the board and the executive leadership team. And so if you're not establishing your baseline through those conversations, you're kind of flying blind, which you definitely don't want to be doing when it comes to risk tolerance.
Michael Collins: it sounds difficult. I would imagine a lot of this is just coming from the pure raw experience of a legal executive by that point in their career. Cause I would imagine some folks are trying to have the best of both and say, we want growth, but we want to avoid as much risk as possible. It must be so difficult to actually get specific about trade-offs
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: there are gradations and you can talk pretty clearly about their gradations. I think it's important not to talk with a false sense of precision. in the litigation world, we used to say like, your most slam dunk case is never better than a seven and 10 chance of winning. there's no such thing as a 90 % chance of a case you're going to win. Cause a case inherently involves, juries and judges that are unpredictable. so you got to kind of bake that into your thinking. But you can definitely have a detailed conversation that, gets beyond just the, want to have my cake, and eat it too, and get aligned. you can be transparent with your leadership team about like, here are some of the things that I'm sort of leaving off the list that I'm discounting as of low probability, or even if they're more probable, just of low impact and kind of get alignment and buy-in around that. precisely this I would say in the law, there's like, 5 % or less at either end of the spectrum that are like clear white and clear black and then the rest is just a big, gray area. the ability to manage and tune to what people's tolerances and given the level of gray, that's involved in that, it's just Like no business decision is totally clear either, right? there's the same kind of
Michael Collins: Absolutely.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: risk and uncertainty involved in business decisions as there are in legal decisions. So you're just there to facilitate a conversation about a certain kind of risk where someone with a legal background is in a little bit better position to like make what the risk is clearer. then you can go work to like implement that
Michael Collins: That's great. What did you believe early in your career that you no longer believe, something you changed your mind on?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I guess I would say there wasn't anything about law school that really prepared me for being, and this is a personal statement, for how to be a law firm
lawyer. And there really wasn't anything about being a law firm lawyer that prepared me to be an in-house lawyer. so it is a very, very evolutionary process. it's important that you like learn all the rules and learn how to play really well with all the Legos at a given stage. And then once you get really good at that, they'll come bring you like a new Lego set and you kind of learn how to do it all over again, if that's interesting to you, then, you kind of keep playing with different versions of those over time and there are people that enjoy kind of staying in the one environment and getting super hyper expert in that. there's no wrong answer to any of that. It's just sort of whatever kind of engages you at the end of the day.
Michael Collins: we keep hearing that from others in similar roles that, they didn't feel prepared from one stage to the other, going from public service to law firm to corporate.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I was really focused on and interested in the transition when I went from Kirkland to Intel, but I have very distinct memories of like my first day at Intel, like kind of showing up and getting to my cube and like getting my computer set up. And I was like, shit, like I really have to figure out,
Michael Collins: you
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I don't know how to do this job. like there isn't anything about what I've been for 12 years, I had been at Skadden and Kirkland doing outside law firm patent litigation. And I knew what that looked like. And I knew what
Michael Collins: Mmm.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: that recipe was. And I knew the steps in the process and all that kind of stuff. And then I like the sheet was completely blank. When I got to Intel, again, fortunately had some amazing mentors and sponsors that kind of were super invested in. me succeeding and doing well that kind of took me under their wing and showed me the ropes and were patient with the ramping process and all that other kind of stuff really helping me be successful. But it's a big transition. Once you do a couple of those, you get good at those over time, doing them and then you get to the point where you're just sort of like, cool, I know it's gonna feel all unsettling and crazy like that, but I'm looking forward to it and like, let's go do it again kind of thing, which is what led me to Boston.
Michael Collins: Were there any big culture shock moments living abroad and all the travel that you were doing overseas?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: Yeah, definitely. I had been going to Germany for business, doing patent litigation for a long time, like dating back to the time that I was a lawyer at Kirkland and you go for a couple of days and you're staying at like a nice hotel and everybody speaks English and you're in a few English meetings then you roll out of town and I go, yeah, I'd love to go live in Germany for a year. And so I got to Munich, the company rent you a flat and I was there by myself and, you're not at the hotel anymore and you're trying to get
your, wifi set up with people that only speak German or you're going to the grocery store and people only speak German. it was a very isolating, like, what have I done? I cried like, what have I blown up my life? And then I made like amazing friends out there and like got really integrated into
Michael Collins: That's awesome.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: stuff. And I just had some amazing lawyers that again, took me under their wing, showed me around, took me all over Europe and then by the time I was leaving, was, crying because I was leaving,
Michael Collins: you would think it's a Western culture, but data privacy and protection culture, wet signatures, notaries, like there's all kinds of little nuances in the business differences, not even just the cultural differences, but it like the business is very different there and yeah.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: No, you really said a mouthful there. I had been working even with the lawyers that I was directly working with. We had been having, German litigation that I was supervising for a couple of years before I moved out there. And I had been working closely with some law firms that I had very positive and deep relationships with. But what it meant to people that the company cared about what was happening in Germany and Europe enough to send me and have me actually live there for a year. And like, I would say four or five months into that process, you could just feel the veils sort of dropping away, even with the people that I had previously very close relationships with. And we started to have just kind of like materially different kinds of conversations as I transitioned inside of like the circle of of trust. And it was such an aha moment, to see like how long and how much investment of time into the relationships it took, even in like a Western cultural milieu, and by extrapolation, when we started to have several years later, all of the activity in China, and I kind of started to do the same thing in China, but without actually moving there, I entered that process with a really different appreciation for how much investment and time and patience it was going to take to cross that same horizon And if I hadn't had that expat experience in Germany, like that would have really been a blind spot for me. And now that I'm here at Pega, And so I've got India team members and colleagues that I'm working with. I haven't traveled to India yet, but it's something that I'm looking forward to doing. I've got kind of a mental scaffolding for like how that is going to go and how that's going to operate. once you've experienced kind of one of those transitions, I think it really helps you understand in a different way.
Michael Collins: it's an encouraging theme throughout this conversation, kind of hearing the human and relationship importance of this legal and corporate management work in the face of all the AI conversation and, tools and all. what are you excited about, lately?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I'm excited about Pega. the opportunity to grow here over the last 12 months has been amazing. I've talked about sort of the SaaS apocalypse and all the crazy disruption that has happened, even in just six of the 12 months that I've been here. But like, we just got rated an amazing Forrester report for AI leadership last week. And I really believe that we've got like fundamental leadership. AI technology, and that's like a super exciting place to be right now. And I think I really have a role to play in business strategy, execution and evolution. And just like really excited to have an opportunity to contribute to this enterprise. We just celebrated our 30th year as a public company and rang the bell at NASDAQ back a month or two ago
Michael Collins: That's awesome.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: and 43 years, still a founder led company. getting to work day to day with like an amazing X Factor founder that's got the kind of strategic vision that he has. you kind of wake up in the morning and like, awesome, let's go to work, you know? And so that's the way I feel right now.
Michael Collins: That's so cool to see founder led at that scale and the endurance of 30 years. What else would you add to the conversation?
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: I like to fall back on be yourself. you can't be a chameleon being a different person to different people or in response to different circumstances. I think in this function, especially people need to know who you are and that you can be. like stable and counted on whatever may come. crisis is your calling card as as a CLO and people don't want to approach a random number generator in times of crisis, right? I think my dad did a lot to like inculcate that kind of perspective in me. And I think it's been really important throughout my career. So.
Michael Collins: is awesome. Ben, thank you so much. I love this conversation. Excited to share it. Really appreciate your time.
Benjamin Yrun Ostapuk: It was a privilege to be with you here and thanks so much for having me,
Michael Collins: Awesome. Thank you.