Fierce Females in Package Printing: Lori Campbell — Leveraging Diversity of Thought for Future Success

To kick off our series featuring fierce females in label and package printing, Packaging Impressions interviewed Lori Campbell, president of The Label Printers and chairman of TLMI. Campbell not only exemplifies the leadership qualities spotlighted in Packaging Impressions Fierce Females series but also was instrumental in the creation of this series. In this Q&A, we get to know Campbell better both as a printing professional and a person.

Click the boxed numbers below to navigate to page 2 and the first question, "How did you get into the package printing industry?"

Campbell: I applied at a few places after college — just through the old-fashioned help wanted ads in the paper. The Label Printers was one of them, but so was the AAA Motor Club.

It took three interviews to land the job as a receptionist at Label Printers, but I knew the industry would be fun because they involved stickers and stickers are fun. So, while the printing industry just happened to be where I landed, I never looked back.

Campbell: To me, diversity and inclusion means more voices, more perspectives, and more input. And I’m a big believer in that. We’re too inclined as humans to listen to our own self-fulfilling thoughts and opinions of others. From the news that we watch and the newspapers we read to the social media sites that we follow, we have tendencies to support ideas that we already believe.

Having others — people who don’t come from the same perspectives or may share some of our beliefs but not all — enables you to become a well-rounded person and organization. The more voices, the more opinions, and the more input you get from others, you become more tolerant and what’s more, is that you grow your mental capabilities to think more globally.

Campbell: Whether you’re talking about your own personal development or your business development, again, having more diversity allows for new ideas to come to the fore. Suppose everybody is pulling from the same background. In that case, whether that’s race, creed, color, or something else, you lose the chance to investigate opportunities and challenges from different perspectives. You also lose a lot of those aha moments. When you have more views, you get more ideas, and more ideas are always better. I’ll argue that point to anybody who wants to: It’s better to have more ideas than less.

Campbell: I'll share my honest perspective about our business. There was some lack of diversity for probably the first 30 years of business [at The Label Printers]. We did well because the label printing business was different then, and in some ways, it was easier to make money. We didn’t have to challenge how business was done; we could simply look back at what worked in the past.

But the world evolved, and over time, we realized we were too insulated and needed more outside perspective. Once we opened up to thoughts outside our four walls, we saw how a diversity of ideas make a huge difference in our future success.

Campbell: I believe my challenges were self-imposed. I was fortunate in a lot of ways. I had a great role model in my mother, who worked in a very heavily male-dominated manufacturing industry and rose to become VP in her company. I was always very fortunate to work for a boss who had no problem giving women opportunities, so plenty of strong women were working for him. I recognized that, and I’m grateful for it.

I had taken it as my challenge to be instrumental in suggesting that we crawl out from our four walls to really see what was going on in our industry, and Cindy White also encouraged me to join TLMI. I can be introverted and shy, so I sometimes need to stretch myself a bit to get involved and work with people I don’t know. After Cindy convinced me of the value of TLMI, I went to my first meeting. Being part of the organization has made a huge difference both personally and professionally. TLMI gave us that outside perspective — allowing us to see how to deal with increasing competition with more intense pricing and brought more diversity to our thinking.

Campbell: I thought about this question a lot because I wanted to share something personal. I’m at the height of my career, so I wanted to share something that I want to give more to at the end game of my career. I’m still in that mode of looking for that.

I have started to get involved with the local food banks, and then, at least from a monetary standpoint, The World Food Bank. To think that in this country, we have kids that get their only meals at school. It’s ridiculous that we have people hungry in this country! That’s not acceptable.

I’m also passionate about animal welfare, but I haven’t been able to separate my heart enough to be able to work for an adoption or rescue type of organization. It’s too painful, so I support that cause monetarily. I’m in awe of people who work in animal welfare and yet not be heartbroken all the time. I don’t have that ability, so I support their work.