Leaders in REM Podcast

Today’s guest is Cynthia Chen, ​​President, North America Health at Reckitt.

Calling Cynthia’s career “impressive” is simply an understatement. 

In addition to being named a Forbes Top 100 Businesswoman, Cynthia won 7 Cannes Lions Awards over a span of just two years for her work leading Oreo at Mondelez. 

Guru and Cynthia discuss what the story was behind her amazing work at Mondelez, where she spearheaded an effort to bring real-time advertising to Oreo, creating 100 ads over 100 days, culminating in the iconic advertisement response to the Super Bowl blackout.

Since her time at Mondelez, Cynthia went on to be a VP at GSK and then was named Managing Director and CEO of General Mills China were she turned around the business from negative growth to double digit growth in just 2 years.

Today, she leads the North America Health team as President at Reckitt.

It’s been a real pleasure to follow Suresh's meteoric rise through the executive ranks of Microsoft, Google and Walmart over the past 15 years.

As someone who was raised to hold education in high regard, learning—whether formal or self-directed—has guided Suresh’s career from interning at IBM Research to becoming Global CTO and CDO at Walmart today. Just as impressive as his career path are the principles and values that guide his decision-making at every turn. 

On this latest podcast episode, Guru and Suresh discuss many interesting topics, from why life doesn’t always work out as planned to how to balance risks when running product experiments—but you won’t want to miss Suresh’s “3 innings of retail” and why he’s well-positioned to disrupt the industry as we know it. 

If there were ever a person who embodies the saying “with knowledge comes power,” it would be Monica McGurk. Her deep love of learning and intense intellectual curiosity led her from rural Minnesota roots to earning degrees from Harvard and Stanford, and rising through the corporate ranks from McKinsey consultant to chief global growth officer at Kellogg’s. 

The odds were against Monica to reach such heights in the corporate world—with just 21% of women in the U.S. workforce reaching the C-suite level—and it by no means has been a smooth journey for her. But she has been a hard-working, unstoppable force with an “I'm willing to try anything” attitude. 

I spoke to Monica about her early influences, career trajectory and family life. One thing that stood out about her personality is that she is seemingly able to extract a lesson from any event in her life, grow from what she’s learned and not lose sight of its importance. It’s one of the reasons that—on top of being an executive, wife and mother—Monica reignited her passion for writing and became a novelist.  

You, too, will be inspired by her incredible journey

Ikdeep Singh’s journey from growing up in a small mining town in India to running multibillion-dollar businesses is an impressive one. Though it’s not surprising when you consider the resilience he's shown and the personal philosophies he’s maintained to get where he is today. 

During college, Ikdeep struggled to find a job, which makes a great story now considering that he has since gone on to build and grow some of the world’s most iconic brands at Procter & Gamble and L'Oréal. His high-profile roles at those ecompanies brought him all over the globe—from North America to Asia and Europe—to live and work. Now he’s landed in Nashville Regional President Pet Nutrition NA at Mars Petcare.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Ikdeep about his fascinating journey and the lessons he’s learned along the way

Bracken Darrell was kind enough to give me time out of his incredibly busy schedule to share his story. For those of you who don’t know him, Bracken has been a fast-rising executive who excelled throughout his professional career and was eventually brought in to turnaround Logitech in 2012. Under his leadership, Logitech’s market capitalization has grown by more than 6x and the rise has been meteoric. 

But most people don’t know that Bracken started with very humble roots. He grew up in Kentucky and was raised by a single mother. His story and philosophies are so rich with thought and intention

It’s one thing to be the CMO of a Fortune 500 company but another thing to be the CMO of the NFL which is probably the world’s most important professional sports league. I really enjoyed my latest interview with Dawn Hudson who was most recently the CMO of the NFL. Today, she also serves on the Board of leading organizations like IPG, Rodan and Fields, Modern Times Group and NVIDIA. But I’m leaving out a whole lot. Dawn was previously the CEO of PepsiCo North America and Vice Chair of the Parthenon Group. Thought I was done? She also served on the Board of the LPGA Tour, Lowe’s, Allergan, Amplify Snacks and PF Chang’s.

It’s safe to say that what Dawn has achieved in a single lifetime is equivalent to what most could only dream of doing over multiple lifetimes.

We now live in an era where we are finally starting to make progress on the glass ceiling. Dawn managed to achieve all of these things when the world was far less progressive and accepting of women in leadership positions.

What I took away from my interview with Dawn was that she has always had an insatiable curiosity and desire to learn new things. But she was also intentional and very well aware of how her career choices would impact the brand and reputation that she would have.