Chief Operating Officer for Mercy Ships
Robert Corley came to Mercy Ships with a resume that included the US Navy, Nokia, Brinks Security, and Southwest Airlines — organizations and companies that may seem vastly different from one another. But when you step back, it’s easy to see all the varied experience come together to fully equip him to serve as the Chief Operating Officer for Mercy Ships.
In this episode, Robert shares the strategic plans for the coming year to ensure Mercy Ships is prepared to have two ships in field service in 2024. He also talks about his hopes for the future of the organization, the gift of building relationships with crewmembers while he visited the vessels, and the ways God has provided for this organization.
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New Mercies Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the New Mercies, a podcast by Mercy Ships, where we’ll take you behind the scenes and on board our incredible hospital ships that are transforming lives all over the world. We invite you to join us each week as we sit down with our crew, patients, volunteers, and partners to hear their stories of life-changing hope and healing.
Robert Corley came to Mercy Ships with a very diverse resume. But when you step back, it’s easy to see how all his varied experience comes together to fully equip him to serve as our Chief Operating Officer. Get ready to be encouraged about the future of Mercy Ships. Here’s my interview with Robert Corley.
Raeanne Newquist:
Well, Robert, welcome to the New Mercies podcast.
Robert Corley:
Thanks for Raeanne. Glad to be here.
Raeanne:
Robert, I know that you have been serving with Mercy Ships now for about two years as our Chief Operating Officer, that means that you joined this team kind of in the midst of the chaos of COVID — an interesting time to be starting a whole new job. So why don’t you start by telling us about the road that led you to Mercy Ships?
Robert:
Yeah, you know, I almost would never advocate for somebody to step into a senior role in the middle of something like COVID — the organization was not fully operating at the time and it was a time of high complexity. But if you think about it, God allows us to go through a lot of these exercises in order to be able to grow in the way He wants us to grow. And so definitely I’ve seen that a lot. But the road to Mercy Ships is anchored in joy, and a little bit of sadness. And I’ll tell you why. Prior to coming into Mercy Ships, I was working for Southwest Airlines and we were living in Dallas about two hours west of here. And my daughter, Tessa got married. It’s a lot of joy in that. So she got married in the fall of 2019, prior to COVID, and they decided to relocate down to East Texas, which is where my wife Tammy and I are from down here in East Texas. And that got us thinking at the time, what are we going to do going forward, she’s our only daughter only child. And so we said, you know, we could stay where we are, or maybe we could go look at other places. And so really the only thing tying us to our town, there was our church and my job. Other than that, there wasn’t really a whole lot. And so I started looking in the fall 2019 and early 2020, right before COVID and I came across Mercy Ships. And I thought to myself, what’s Mercy Ships doing in East Texas doesn’t make any sense. There’s no ships here! There’s no large bodies of water!
A lot of people think that doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I brought this up at our Home Group and our senior pastor Larry Parsley at our at our church was in there and he pulled me aside afterwards said, Hey, I’ve got a friend of mine who is on the board of Mercy Ships. Would you like for me to introduce you to him? And his name’s Gary Brandenburg, which a lot of people know Gary, and Gary’s connected a lot of people into Mercy Ships. Absolutely. That’d be fantastic. And so he did a little email introduction, Gary, and I made some plans to get together in the spring of 2020. But as you would note, COVID was right in the middle of it, which delayed Gary and I getting together until right around May of 2020. And in May of 2020, we got to have some lunch and he said, Hey, I’m headed down to the ISC their national support center, next week, maybe you come with me. And so I did, I actually went down with him. I got to go and meet a lot of people here on campus, Dr. Andrew Clark got to tour me around the campus, I get to meet a lot of people and just really came back with a feeling that day that I was going to be involved in Mercy Ships in some way. Now, I didn’t know if that was volunteering. I didn’t know if that was donating. I didn’t know if that was working there. But I said, Okay God, when you’re ready, let me know.
And so in parallel with this, my wife and I, we basically said, You know what, we’re going to move anyway. And so we moved east Texas. And we sold our house up in Dallas, I was still working for Southwest, but working remotely as most people were at the time. And by August of 2020, we relocated down here into the East Texas area and I continued to work for Southwest for another four or five months.
And then out of the blue in December of 2020, I got a call from Gary. And he said, Hey, our CEO, that point it was Tom Stogner, said, I’d like to talk to you about a possible opportunity. So I had a great conversation with Tom did some interviews and what they brought me on to do is be an executive program manager to help get the Global Mercy out of China and into field service, and kind of help lead and make sure everything was getting done. And then two months later they said, Hey, by the way, we’ve got this role we’d like you to step into as the Chief Operating Officer. I was kind of taken aback, but God kind of prepared me for that, evidently. So anyway, that’s really kind of how I got here. I mentioned the sadness part — it’s really not in the story of getting into Mercy Ships, but I think God uses different situations, my daughter did go through a tough time with the person that she married, where it was a borderline abusive relationship. And she actually ended up getting out of that relationship.
Raeanne:
Well, that is incredible. You know, it’s so neat how God paves the way for these things. And we have no idea what He’s planning, but all along, He has intention and purpose in everything that he does. I love that you went from airplanes to ships. Kind of an interesting transition, what was it like for you to transition into the nonprofit world?
Robert:
Great question. Let me go back just a little bit through some of my background, which I think will help set this a little bit. I just spoke at a veteran’s event last week, where we actually talked about this very thing, how purposes can kind of be thematic through your career. I actually spent four years in the Navy back in the late 90s. I’ve been around ships before, I grew up around it. My dad was also in the Navy for 20 years. So ships and the maritime industry was not unfamiliar to me. It’s very familiar in fact, but also as I got out of the Navy, I worked at a couple other places. I spent 12 years working at Nokia in the telecommunications industry, I spent some time at Brinks in the insecure logistics industry, and then in McKesson in the healthcare industry, and then Southwest Airlines and transportation. And if you start to look at that these are very diverse segments, different industries and so you start to think, how do you transition from one to the other, and really, what it turns into is if you if you look at it from a timeline perspective, it’s just a career, and if you were to rotate that and look at it kind of like a telescope, and you look down that career, what you would really see is almost a tube of purpose.
And you can see the different skill sets, if you think about things like capability, character purpose, that really helped drive across different industries. So no matter which situation you kind of get into whether that’s for profit, nonprofit, telecommunications, you know, helping change people’s lives through surgeries, it really becomes consistent in that way instead of looking at it in a traditional way. And so I think the transition of the nonprofit, while it has been significant, in many things and culturally, it’s a little bit different too, because what you do is you have an intrinsic motivation, that is different than a for profit company, for profit, right? You have dollars, really, and you have shareholders or board specific things that you’re driving towards, or customers. In this case, we do have customers, we also have revenue we need to generate, but it’s for a specific purpose. And it just happens to be serving God. And in what I’ve been told this kind of artwork is worship to God.
Raeanne:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s encouraging even to hear a little bit of your resume, if you will, because I think it’s important that our listeners know, people who maybe aren’t involved in Mercy Ships, but are learning about Mercy Ships, that this is an organization that employs and deploys highly trained professionals, in all that they do, whether it’s our surgeons, or our executive leadership team in Texas, everyone comes with an incredible resume behind them. And it’s just really encouraging to know that we pursue excellence for the kingdom of God. I love that we are an organization that really seeks excellence in all that we do. And I think it’s reflected in our staff, our crew, our volunteers, it’s very encouraging.
Robert:
Kind of reflects our core values, right? If we’re going to say, we’re going to be people of excellence in all we say, and do, we definitely need to do that in terms of hiring or in terms of people development. And so there are certain things that we can do better. But man, if we are always pursuing something better, and God deserves our excellence, God deserves our top notch every single day. And so we need to make sure that we’re doing that as individuals that also organizationally, that we’re helping provide the excellence to achieve His mission.
Raeanne:
Absolutely. Well, you had mentioned earlier that when you first went down to the ISC with Gary Brandenburg, that there was something about that experience that you went home and said, Hey, we’re going to be involved with Mercy Ships. I don’t know to what capacity but we’re going to do this. What was it that gave you that feeling?
Raeanne:
You know, I’m not sure because it was really in the car with Gary on the ride back where God just says, You’re going to be a part of this, you’re going to be a part of me and my work in this area. And so initially, I think it was just this this sense of peace. This is what I’ve been gearing you up for all along and I’ve been giving you the skills and experiences, sometimes hard experiences that are going to make you have the fortitude to be able to go through this in an organization that is having to restart in many ways, when they’re also going to have to grow as we give exponential growth from one ship to two ship as well.
It’s probably a good time that I also talk about the decision that I made to actually to accept the offer. And this is something I think is really, really important to the story. When I had the final interview, and I had the offer, my immediate reaction was, hey, thank you, I appreciate the offer. Now I need some time to process. This is a huge change going from a corporate environment into a nonprofit, stepping away from something that I’d known for the better part of a decade into something brand new. And the effect that it has, not only on me personally, but even more so my family. And so that day that I got the call, I was visiting with my Great Uncle Buck up in Dallas, and I said Buck, I’ve got this opportunity to maybe go do something different. He said, Well, what are you going to do about it? I said, I’m going to go spend some time and pray and think about it and talk to some people that are really trusted advisors. And so I left his house that day, and drove over to near White Rock Lake in Dallas. And there’s a place called flagpole hill there. And flagpole hill is a really pretty really serene place. It’s got a big flagpole, as you might imagine. I pulled my truck off to the side and just kind of sat there in the shade, there was a nice breeze blowing across that day. And I said, Well, I’m just going to call a couple of my friends. One was a pastor, one was my best friend and neither one of them answered the phone. And so I said, Okay, well, what are we going to do now. And so I just sat there, had a little music on and was just kind of sitting there observing and got myself something to eat. So just eating, and I looked out the window to the driver side window. And there is this rolling slope that kind of goes up. And coming down the hill towards me, was this little boy. And he was probably two years old, maybe three, kind of running down the hill and about 30-40 yards behind him, I see his dad, or what I think is his dad chasing him down the hill. Because as the boy’s getting closer and closer to me, there’s a road between me and the boy. And man and you start to think, okay, let’s watch this unfold. And as he starts to get closer, dad’s trying to stop the boy from running down towards the road, a car drives by about that time. And so for me, in that moment, I’ve got really two options.
One, I can get out of my truck and hope the dad gets there too. I can do something about it. And so I stepped out of the truck, I walked across the road, kind of put my arms up in front of me and that little boy sees this big guy in front of him and he stops, which is great. And he kind of looks back at his dad, looks back at me and then he looks back at his dad and his dad’s there by that time. He says thank you and they go on their way. Man, I just turned around and got in my truck and the emotions came. And as I unpacked this situation later with my friend Shamir, he said, Robert, think about that story, you’ve really got three characters, you’ve got the Dad, you’ve got the little boy, and you’ve got you. And he said, You’re that little boy. So as you’re thinking about this, he said, Look, he said, God’s got you either way, He’s going to come across the road to help stop you in the face of traffic, but He’s also going to be chasing down the hill. So I felt like, we’re good, let’s go, God’s got it. And so that was kind of the decision to go to Mercy Ships.
Raeanne:
That’s an incredible story. And what a beautiful illustration of our God — He goes before us, but He also hems us in, you know, behind us, and He has got our back. But he’s also paved the way ahead of us. And so, man, if you’re just following his will, you’re going to be covered.
Robert:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It’s exactly what I think of when I tell it.
Raeanne:
Yeah. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And, Robert, you mentioned that you were initially brought on to get the Global Mercy out of China, which we know was a success because she is today in Dakar, Senegal serving patients, which is awesome. And then you transitioned into the chief operating officer position. Why don’t you tell us what are your main objectives as the COO of Mercy Ships?
Robert:
The number one objective right now is to get us to what I would call a simplified and sustainable operating model by 2024. In February of 2024, we plan to have two vessels of significant size operating simultaneously in separate countries for the first time in the organization’s history. Not that we haven’t had multiple vessels before, but we have not been of this size in separate countries operating that way. It creates a lot of complexity for the organization, whether that’s talking about things like recruiting or even the fundraising or policies and procedures. How do you ensure that you’ve got everybody on the same page communications wise, all these things make it very complex. So as you start to think about how do I simplify this so people can understand, but then how do I make sure it’s sustainable? And that’s really the biggest target that we really have right now is to get us to that point.
There are really three main goals that we really have for 2023. One of those, as you might expect, is to ensure that we have the Global Mercy finish well in Senegal as at this point. But also, then we have a successful ramp up and field service in Sierra Leone, for the for the Global Mercy. And that starts in the fall this year around August, and then it will continue into next year at Sierra Leone field service. In parallel with that, in order to be able to get to that sustainable operating model, what we really need is for the Africa Mercy to be ready. And so the balance of this year will be getting the Africa Mercy refit in South Africa, in order to ensure that we’ve got a platform that’s able to continue well. And so that’s number two. Number one would be their field services. Number two be the Africa Mercy refit. And the third one really has focused around our digital security or cybersecurity or digital transformation. A little bit of irony in that we had this cyber-attack in January that really crippled us a bit is that we had some really good plans we took into the board, we communicated out for 2023. And the technology team had done a great job at saying these are the steps we need to take to ensure our security. And then lo and behold, January 12 rolls around, we have a cyber attack before we’re able to put everything in place, it’s always a matter of when something happens and not if, because it will. But those are really our three big things.
The other ones are more departmental is that we have some department effectiveness initiatives we need to do and the two areas are really focused on there. One is HR, making sure that we’ve got the right processes, and the right procedures, the right staffing there. Our chief people officer really focused in that area to help get us there, along with his team. And the other one really is around supply chain. Our supply chain department is working through some global partnerships with the European distribution center. Paul, who leads that overseas, as well is ensuring that we’ve got the right logistics to be able to supply both ships, that’s a huge thing. We often discount a little bit at our resources, you need money in order to be able to fund it. But you got to have people and you got to have your supplies to be able to execute against it. So those are kind of really our biggest focus areas this year, in order to help get us to that simplified and sustainable operating model in 2024.
Raeanne:
This sounds like a lot of big things, a lot of major things, if you will. And as you mentioned, there’s a lot of logistics, there’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of people involved a lot of organization and strategy that’s going on, in the midst of all of that, what is most life giving for you in your job?
Robert:
So this actually should be pretty easy for me, I happen to be a Gallup certified strengths coach. And so my top five strengths are, developer, positivity, arranger, communication, and strategic, that developer piece for me is really key. I love to partner with people to make small incremental improvements over a long period of time, so they can develop into the people that we need them to be. But I really feel strongly that God’s give me the ability to put the right people in the right team in the right seats in order to be able to go and execute towards a mission. And so, what gives me life really is people, and getting to see them succeed and getting to ensure that we’ve got the right people in the right seats. And then just seeing what they can do. I like to empower, hold accountable and encourage and just spend time with the folks as well. So that’s what really gives me the biggest thrill, I guess, if you will.
Raeanne:
Oh, that’s great. I love it. What are some areas that you hope to see the organization grow in in this coming year?
Robert:
You know, when I think about the growth of the organization, there’s a couple things — just within the operation, we’re developing a new area called the global support services. And this global support services really pulls together things that are in common in order to be able to support things a little more cohesively, and also take a little off my plate, which is great. So a lot of people that I’m responsible for right now, when we start to think about pulling together, or create some synergy by pulling together some things like facilities or hospitality and culinary services, we just set up a new group focused on immigration and customs so we can get a better experience for a lot of our people and understand the rules in these different countries.
And also be a connection point for operations directors on the ship back to the ISC which can be a little cumbersome sometimes, because you have all these different lines of business and the ops directors are cutting across all of that. And we want to grow that as more of a shared service within the organization in order to be able to help us as we grow. I think that’s within operations, I think then globally, is to be able to ensure that our collaboration is really enhancing in so much as the way we communicate, but also the way that we include people.
And so when you think about just the overall collaboration, collaboration is not just about communicating, it’s a very important piece of it, but it’s also being in the moment, open to working with somebody or being right alongside of them, or even more focused in a more focused way to understand the point of view of the person who’s sitting across from you and being able to say, look, I’ve got two ears and one mouth, I’m using the proportion to be able to help understand your perspective before I tried to push mine on you. And I think that growth of collaboration is really exciting.
Raeanne:
Yeah, that’s exciting, especially when you’re dealing with so many different cultures, and traditions and backgrounds. And, you know, there’s so many different elements that play into that. But I think that working together and coming together, listening more than we speak is so, so very important. And love that.
Have you visited any of the vessels?
Robert:
I did, I actually spent two weeks in Tenerife, the last latter part of January. So right after the cyber attack, I went out there. And I got to spend a little time on both the Global Mercy and the Africa Mercy there for about two weeks, which was an amazing experience just to get to meet people and experience kind of what went on in some small part, what they’re working through everyday on the ship. I had a great opportunity to work in the galley and dining room one day.
I walked up that day, and Leanna said, Okay, what do you want to do? I said, who’s in charge? She said, Well, I’m the team lead. I said, Well, then I work for you today. So you tell me what I’m supposed to do and make sure that I’m trained. And she did, she did a fantastic job. And I got to meet just a lot of amazing people that day, also got to work on the Africa Mercy, and got to be able to help cook some Texas barbecue.
Raeanne:
I love it kind of like “Undercover Boss” a little bit.
Robert:
It’s interesting, because you know, I wear the uniform. And so you kind of look like I felt like a ninja and the uniforms, a fantastic concept, you get the hat, you get everything. And then I had the mask on too so they didn’t know who I was, at one point. But I just wave and talk to people and smile and have conversations, and just really enjoyed more than anything, a little one on one interactions. It was wonderful to hearing people’s stories or hearing things that are maybe paining them and you know, how organizationally can we help? Or just listening, a lot of listening and time as well just be present.
Raeanne:
I think it’s incredible, to have a role where you’re working for the organization and even though yes, we have FaceTime, we have technology, you’re speaking with people on the ships all the time, but there’s something different about actually stepping foot on the vessel yourself. In that environment to see that, oh, it’s not just, videos that I’ve seen, or it’s not just a newsletter that I’ve read, I’m actually here in person, it really exists. It’s real. And I don’t know if you experienced this, my sense is that you probably did, I’ve yet to speak to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.
But when you get on board, there is just something different about our vessels. There’s something different about the environment, something different about those places. And when you get off, even if it’s only been a two-week visit, you’re different, forever changed. Now, I know this was probably unique, because when you were just on the vessels while they were in Tenerife, you said so they weren’t in field service. So you didn’t encounter patients. But how did you experience a change in your heart or just a change in perspective, having been on board for a couple of weeks?
Robert:
In my case, it was right after the cyber-attack and so we didn’t really have a whole lot of good communication capability. International lounge was set up as on the Global Mercy as a kind of hotspot area for people to work. And so it actually gave me an opportunity to see people a little in kind of the day to day interaction. So I got to just walk through and observe. When you think about how I might have been changed, I think the biggest thing for me was just getting some of those relationships initially connected so that I could go back and I can have conversations with people that I wouldn’t have had been able to before. But I will tell you it was emotional both on the arrival and when I arrived there and I drove up onto the pier and I was able to see both ships, there’s emotion there. And then when I left too I was a little sad, man, I just I love being around everybody and seeing people pull together during the cyber-attack was pretty phenomenal. Because what you didn’t have was people blaming the IT team.
What you didn’t have was people getting super, super frustrated. While it was frustrating, people weren’t getting frustrated with it. They were saying okay, we’ve got something we need to figure out and credit to the teams on board and everybody that supports them that we only delayed a week from our original plan for arrival in Senegal with the Global Mercy, amazing. And we kept our schedule for the Africa Mercy to go down and sail to Durban even amidst the tech crisis, and that the downstream impact of that is that we’re probably not going to see a whole lot of slippage in our schedule, doesn’t mean there’s not stress, doesn’t mean that people aren’t overworked, doesn’t mean that there’s not tension, because there is, but man, it’s pretty phenomenal to see those teams pull together just to go and get it done. Because I want to be able to serve God and serve people and get to do the work that we’ve been called to do.
Raeanne:
I love that, you know, it makes me think of the story of Joseph and his brothers. And I think when Joseph speaks to his brothers later on, who had sold him into slavery, and kind of abandoned him and whatnot, you know, he says, you meant this to harm me, but God meant it for good. In other words, you know, evil does not prevail, but God’s will always prevails. And we had this horrible cyber-attack, which many people, you know, outside of the organization didn’t really know about. It wasn’t widely publicized. But, it was a huge setback. And it’s been a ton of work for a lot of people to recover from, however, God is still faithful, He is still moving. He couldn’t, you know, the enemy could not stop what God already had planned. And I think that we will be stronger and better for it. As you mentioned, there was already a plan in place before the cyber-attack even hit — God was already making away. So I love that you got to experience firsthand just the teams coming together on board and not being defeated in the midst of this cyber-attack.
Robert:
Yeah, I mean, think about how many people actually get to go through one, a lot of people, but how many people in an organization like ours get to go through a cyber-attack? So when it does happen, because again, it’s not if it’s when that will happen again, we’ll be that much more prepared for it.
Raeanne:
Absolutely. As we’re going into the rest of this field service with the Global Mercy moving on to Sierra Leone, and then as you mentioned, next year, the hope of having both the Africa Mercy and the Global Mercy and field service together, not in the same country, but at the same time, what are your hopes for the coming years for Mercy Ships?
Robert:
Yeah, you know, I think probably my operational mindset, a lot of things I hope don’t happen. That’s important, too. It is, you know, I have the hope that the plans that God is giving us and is putting before us anyway, that they hold because we do have some great plans in place, I hope that we’re able to go and find all the people that we need in order to fill some of the staffing gaps that we have, and that God continues to provide people, although it’s a little hard, sometimes they come in last minute. But I’m very hopeful that when we start thinking about our three strategic pillars that we have, and the first one bring the organization together, that the organization is brought together through our work, and through our relationship with God, we think about our culture, we think about how we do HR, we think about our tools, our software tools or processes, that those find favor in God’s eyes.
And I think every individual that makes up the organization gives grace to those around them. And that is on my rest of my shoulders and other executive leaders and, and leaders at different levels in the organization to help bring that. And so I’m very hopeful that we have some stability, and that we can move forward in the right way. Because ultimately, God’s got a plan already. And while we can’t always see it, we need to have just that knowledge that He has gone before, right? It was what we talked about earlier, God’s gone before. He’s going to make sure things are okay. It’s not going to look like what we think it is right now. It never does. But that’s okay. It’s okay. Because we trust them.
Raeanne:
Absolutely. Well, Robert, I am so grateful that God has brought you to Mercy Ships for this season, and who knows how long it will be. But for now, it’s just wonderful that God has fully equipped you and given you the experience necessary to help lead this organization into the next chapter, which is an exciting one of having two ships and Field Service next year. So Robert, thank you for sharing with us a little bit about what you do in Mercy Ships and thank you again for your leadership and for your excellence.
Robert:
Oh, thanks Raeanne. I appreciate your time to be able to help me even unpack this is such a great gift for me because I don’t often take the time to sit down and reflect. It’s a great gift just to be able to sit and have a conversation and thanks for all you’re doing in order to bring these stories to life for us as an organization too.
For more information about Mercy Ships, go to mercyships.org, and to keep up with the guests on New Mercies, follow us on Instagram at NewMerciesPodcast.