Lisa Pierson ’08 Information Technology Cardinal Health

Cinderella had a fairy Godmother, and this global company has a Falcon.

But Lisa Pierson ’08, ’14 needs no magic wand. As an information-technology professional in Cardinal Health’s strategic pricing unit, Pierson and her team design systems to transform ideas into new business practices.

Pierson is deeply engaged in Cardinal Health’s ever-sharpening emphasis on meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

She doesn’t stay behind a desk writing code. Her role as a project manager (or a “scrum master” to Agile-aficionados) means recognizing inefficiencies, collaborating on solutions and critically evaluating results. In an early victory, Pierson built a better web-based tool for sales staff to test new pricing strategies for customers. Her tool generated multiple “what-if” scenarios, which enable sales staff to engage clients in perfecting their own solutions — and costs Cardinal Health less in the process.

“They let me fly out to the pilot group and present it,” she said. “I literally got a standing ovation from the group. It was so cool, such a cool moment.”

As an undergraduate in computer science at BGSU, Pierson found a solid mentor in Dr. Julie Barnes and a group of lifelong friends of varied interests in the honors program.

“You have to get to know people different than yourself,” Pierson said of her BGSU experience. “You learn at a certain point to talk about what you are learning in a language everyone can understand.”

Pierson will soon complete her master’s degree in organizational development through the executive program at BGSU Levis Commons in Perrysburg. With encouragement from her superiors at Cardinal Health, she was the youngest professional in the BGSU master’s cohort of rising executives.

“Having a great idea doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to change,” Pierson said, explaining the program. ”You need to know how to approach that change in order to enact it into an organization.”

Pierson hopes to continue to grow at Cardinal Health as an “idea extractor,” she said.

“I want to draw ideas out, figure out whether they are viable and help implement the change plan to (take) them to fruition,” she said.