Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Kathy Giusti, founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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Tell me about your early years.

I grew up in a little town called Blue Bell, Pa., a small suburb northwest of Philadelphia. My father was a physician, and my mom was a nurse. There were four of us born in three years, so I have two older brothers, and then my sister and I are twins. I was No. 3 by seven minutes, and she was No. 4.

That may have made a difference in our lives. I came out more the bossy one, and she came out more the free spirit. She was also treated as the baby of the family while I was treated as a middle child. It’s kind of funny.

Our house had much more tension than most, and that was probably because my father was incredibly hard-working, demanding and driven. He always said, “Never sit idle.” You did not sleep late on Saturday morning in our household. I probably got my work ethic from him.

So why the tension?

It was that generation. You come from nothing, and he was building everything he could for his family. Becoming a physician was always his path, but as time went by, he became less enamored with his profession. It was more about insurance and paperwork and bureaucracy. The more that happened, the less happy he was, and perhaps we all felt that.

And when you think about your leadership style today, do you see strands of your parents’ influence?

I see the influence of both of them, in that I’m hard-working and I probably push the boundaries on everything. So that’s a little bit of my father. From my mom, I realized the importance of finding those really important moments with my family, especially since I’ve been living with cancer. I became very focused on time management.

My mom was also very focused on trying to make sure we stood on our own two feet, that we had that independence. It was less important to my father. Again, it was a different generation back then.

What was your first job out of college?

I was at Merck for four years and started in sales. That was brilliant. I know that’s not the kind of work that everybody wants to do, but when you’re young, I recommend this to everybody. It’s so important to be able to articulate your own ideas and communicate them effectively, whether it’s a product or an entire brand. It’s a gift.

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To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.