During my junior year in LEAD404: Organizational Leadership, our semester project focused on studying a real organization and understanding how leadership works within it. As part of the project, we eventually had to conduct a professional interview with someone in a leadership role at the organization we chose.

I stepped up to help lead that part of the project, which meant preparing thoughtful questions and helping guide the conversation during our interview with Jim Miskel, the Division President of Laboratory and Imaging Services at ICON PLC. I had to think more carefully about how to ask questions that would actually lead to useful insight, listen closely to what he was saying, and then translate those ideas into something my team could clearly explain in our final presentation.

What stuck with me most was how he described ICON as a service company where success depends heavily on trust, quality work, and delivering results on time. He also explained how the company is structured into different divisions that operate somewhat independently but still have to coordinate across teams and functions. Hearing that perspective made me realize how important clear communication and collaboration are in large organizations, especially when teams are spread across different roles and locations.