A Father’s Day reflection on ribs, risk, and raising a quality leader

My father could break down a side of beef before most people had finished their morning coffee. He was a butcher, a craftsman who understood that the quality of the cut determined everything that came after. What showed up on the plate started with the accuracy, knowledge, and care behind the counter. He never told me that in so many words. He showed me.

That lesson has followed me through more than 35 years in pharmaceutical and medical device quality leadership. I just didn’t realize it at the time.

Dad didn’t stay behind the counter forever. He parlayed his deep knowledge of meat and flavor into something bigger. VP of Sales and Marketing roles with food companies, patents for food products, and eventually his own rib businesses. More than one. He had a nose for what people wanted and the drive to build something from scratch. He could sell, he could innovate, and he could run an operation. Not many people can do all three.

Growing up watching him, I absorbed things I couldn’t have articulated as a kid. The way he treated a problem, methodically, without panic, always asking why before asking how. The way he understood that a great product only stays great if every step of the process is controlled and consistent. The way he never cut corners, even when it would have been easier. And I think it could have been. 

Sound familiar? It should. It’s basically the foundation of a quality management system.

I’ve spent my career building, fixing, and leading quality and regulatory functions, in biologics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics, aerospace, and automotive. I’ve sat across the table from FDA investigators. I’ve written warning letter responses for global companies. I’ve helped organizations create the systems that keep patients safe and products compliant.

None of that happened in a vacuum. It grew from groundwork set by a man who understood, long before I had the vocabulary for it, that quality isn’t a department. It’s a discipline. It’s a mindset.

When I walk into a company and do a gap assessment, I’m asking the same questions my father implicitly asked every day at the butcher block: Where is the risk? Where does this process break down? What does “good” actually look like here and how do we make sure we get there every single time?

There’s something else he taught me, too, and it might be the most important thing: the willingness to start something.

He didn’t wait for someone to hand him an opportunity. He saw a market, he understood the product better than anyone, and he built businesses around it. The rib restaurants weren’t the result of luck, they were the result of someone who had paid attention his whole life and was brave enough to act on what he knew.

I think about that when I work with a client who’s stuck. Who has good people and decent processes, but somehow can’t move forward. Often the issue isn’t knowledge. It’s the courage to commit to a direction and build something real.

Dad committed. Every time. Even if it wasn’t completely successful.  

This Father’s Day, I’m not just celebrating a dad. I’m celebrating a butcher who became a businessman, an inventor, an entrepreneur and somewhere along the way, became the blueprint for everything I’ve tried to build in my career.

The standards are different now. The regulations are more complex, the stakes are higher, and the products are a lot harder to explain at a dinner party than a rack of ribs. But the core of it? That came from him.

Quality starts at the source. You do the work right, every time, or you don’t do it at all. Thanks, Dad. I owe you a lot of the credit.

Jackie Torfin is a pharmaceutical and medical device quality and regulatory consultant with over 30 years of experience. She is the owner of QLeaR Advisors LLC and an Adjunct Professor at St. Cloud State University.