George Pontiakos is president and CEO of BI Nutraceuticals. Pontiakos oversees all aspects of operations for BI Nutraceuticals west and east coast offices and the Zuellig Group Nutrition and Ingredients based in China. A New Jersey native, Pontiakos has held senior leadership positions at several leading consulting, medical services and technology companies including Monovasia, which he founded, Oluma, Lucent, Agere, Ortel, NetVantage and Timeplex. He has wide-ranging experience in scaling geographically dispersed global companies to maximize their ability to successfully compete in the marketplace. Pontiakos holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
Health E-Insights: What is your company’s competitive advantage?
Mr. Pontiakos: Our people. We have a strong group of professionals who make BI unique and quality focused. We also have a strong culture at BI, which includes customer service and execution. That’s why we have been so successful for so many years. That’s both in the U.S. and globally. We compete globally in sourcing and business from a sales perspective. Our people identified steam sterilization as the methodology of choice about six years ago. We continue to be the only raw materials supplier who steam sterilizes on a species-specific basis to ensure the volatile oils and efficacy of the plant are not impacted. We also introduced identilok to identify a species to its genus.
Health E-Insights: As an organization gets larger there can be a tendency for the company to dampen the inspiration. How do you keep this from happening?
Mr. Pontiakos: I don’t manage anybody. Our people manage themselves. They are empowered to go ahead and make decisions, try new things, service customers and bring in new products. The only thing I bring to a company are decisions and direction. Everything is driven by my colleagues at BI. Their competitive nature and professionalism and view of the marketplace is what drives the inspiration and freshness of what BI is all about.
Health E-Insights: If you could improve only one area of your company what would it be?
Mr. Pontiakos: We feel BI is a wonderful place to work. I love coming to work every day and I believe everyone I work with feels the same way. We enjoy each other’s company and are highly competitive. And we keep a good sense of humor about it. You can always improve different facets of the business. I can’t think of one area that really needs to be improved at this time. Any improvement does start organically. If our people see that something does need improvement they jump in and fix it. So half of the things that get fixed, I didn’t know were even broken.
Health E-Insights: How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization?
Mr. Pontiakos: When you are competing in a globally competitive marketplace and you are geographically dispersed as we are with 11 locations, you have to be a free and creative thinker to cross-functionally drive ideas and products, as well as execution throughout the company. We insist on a level of maturity. You have to be creative and mature enough, as well as comfortable to be creative and make decisions on your own. That’s even if it doesn’t work out. Then we just move on and figure out a different path. It’s a great place to be,
Health E-Insights: What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others?
Mr. Pontiakos: Leaders who surround themselves with very poor people and don’t have the personal strengths to stop a bad decision. That’s the ultimate issue. From the president of a company to the president of a country, if you don’t surround yourself with good people, then it’s a wasted trip.
Health E-Insights: If you were written about on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, what would the storyline be?
Mr. Pontiakos: It would say I really love to compete. That I am monomaniacally confident in the organizations I lead and I’m one hell of a grandfather.