Carols, kicklines, and big plans for 2024 – a Christmas interview with Richard Jezykowski, new VP Commercial Americas at LGC Standards

Richard Jezykowski is LGC Standards’ new Vice President, Head of Commercial, for the Americas – a vast region covering 35 countries, and stretching from the North to the South Pole. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from The State University of New York in Oneonta, Richard initially worked as a pharmaceutical chemist before moving into sales and marketing, and has more than 20 years of experience in scientific products across a wide range of commercial roles – most recently as a Division Director at Perkin Elmer.

Born and raised in Queens, New York, he now lives in the small seaside town of Northport, Long Island, with his wife, Nicole, eight-year-old daughter Anna, and four-and-a-half-year-old son Griffin. A keen skier and ice hockey player in his spare time, Richard also describes himself as “an avid new York sports fan”, with allegiances to a number of local teams. Here, he tells us about his special love of Christmas, why he’s proud to work for LGC Standards, and what our Americas customers can expect us to deliver in 2024.

What do you enjoy most about Christmas?

I think Christmas – or really the holidays, from Thanksgiving through to New Years – is without doubt the best time of the year.

My mother, my family, all loved the holiday season. Coming from a Catholic, Polish-Italian household, they always made Christmas very special, and I think that’s stayed with me. Now that I have children, it’s become a little more magical still, and a little bit more meaningful. Certainly, my wife has the same viewpoint: we put up a tree, we put lights on the house and in the home, and just create a festive environment, because we want it to be just as special for our kids as it was for us.

I also really appreciate the way LGC supports the holiday season with a lot of the business being closed in between Christmas and New Year’s. I think that's a fantastic employee benefit. Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, I think it’s a very nice gesture from the company.

Do you have any special Christmas traditions or plans?

Our town does this special event –  it's this coming Saturday and I can't wait! – where they turn off the lights on Main Street and one of the stores puts a Leg Lamp like the one from A Christmas Story in its window. Then they light it up and reenact the scene from the movie. They also close the street to cars, and everyone comes out there – having drinks and partying. There’s also a kickline and a band, so it’s really cool. But I think what I enjoy most about Christmas is the music. Playing Christmas carols in the house or in the car.  I'm not artistic or musical at all, but I do enjoy Christmas music quite a bit.

What are the links between a Happy Christmas and LGC’s mission of Science for a safer world?

When we think about food and drink during the holidays, a lot of us think about turkeys - which whether we like it or not are often mass-produced, and injected with hormones and veterinary products. So producers run tests on all of their poultry to measure vet residues. They use LC-MS to do that, and they also need a reference material to detect and quantify its presence.

So there’s a very clear connection between what we do in the science world and what touches us during the holidays from a consumer goods perspective: food packaging, toys, everything.

Even outside of Christmas, I think that you feel proud when you work for a company that has an impact or an influence like that. It provides LGC employees with pride in the place that they work, and a ton of purpose, and that’s particularly evident during the holiday season. I think it’s also something that we need to communicate and remind ourselves of very regularly, because it also increases employee engagement.

You began as a working analytical chemist and then thrived in sales and marketing – how can both those experiences help LGC Standards’ customers?

I started as a chemist right out of university. But after six months, maybe a year, I realised that I probably wouldn’t have a very long or successful career if I decided to stay in a laboratory.

However, what I did like about the science industry was that you could go into the business side of things. During my three years in the laboratory, I got good exposure to the people that we bought things from, and I was always very impressed with a couple of the suppliers that we worked with. They left an impression on me because they would literally come into our laboratory and work with us on solutions, and how we could be better chemists, how we could build efficiencies, how we could buy quicker.

I'd like to think that I’ve taken those formative career experiences, and applied those in my commercial roles over time, because I felt like I had a good customer experience with many of them. I've always kept that in the back of my mind and tried to build commercial programmes and commercial teams that could emulate that.

What will you be looking to deliver to our US customers in the New Year?

There's tremendous potential in the Americas. I would say that about 35-40% of the world’s lab space resides there, and I’m certain we don't get enough of the addressable market. So this is a building process, and we’re really just building it from the ground up. But it’s also a really good opportunity for me to keep learning and accomplish something great.

I believe that customers in the US and the Americas are waiting for, or would expect, much more from LGC. I think they look at our portfolio and they say: “Hey, these guys make good products. Their offer is quality, it's unique and differentiated.” But I think the customer is also expecting much more from us from an experience perspective, from a service level perspective. And when I say service levels, I mean being responsive. I mean delivering products on time, answering technical questions in an efficient manner. I think those things help shape customer experience and their views of LGC - or any vendor, for that matter.

So customers, at the very minimum, should expect that I and the team we're building will be willing and open to communicating effectively. Some accounts want more than a transactional relationship: they want to collaborate, and they want a partnership. We look forward to being their partner of choice in 2024.