Early on in her profession, Kathleen Kay by no means pictured herself within the C-suite. She went to a public highschool in Detroit and initially began on a pre-med monitor in her ungraduated research. However she found pc science as an alternative. She began her profession at Normal Motors, the place a mentor acknowledged her potential. At the moment, she is government vp and CIO of Principal Monetary Group, an funding administration and insurance coverage firm.
In a dialog with InformationWeek, Kay traces her profession trajectory, sharing how she grew into CTO and CIO management roles at a number of firms.
The Path to the C-Suite
Kay has come a great distance since her highschool days. “It could by no means have occurred to me I’d be ready like this,” she shares.
She wasn’t even certain if she was going to go to school, however a corporation that labored with youngsters at her highschool helped her acknowledge that chance. She bought a scholarship and initially determined to pursue a pre-med monitor, solely to find she hated biology.
“In Detroit … we have been at all times in search of good, secure, well-paying careers. Pc science was paying properly. So I assumed, ‘I will take a pc science class and see if I prefer it,’” she shares. “And I ended up loving it.”
Like lots of her friends in Detroit on the time, Kay bought her begin within the automotive business. Her first job was in a analysis laboratory at GM. She labored alongside varied researchers in specialties like social sciences, anthropology, psychology, and operations science. The function afforded her quite a lot of flexibility to discover her pursuits, and there she was drawn to studying programs.
Kay then labored with Chevrolet division of the corporate, the place she caught the attention of an inner management program that chosen high-potential workers.
“For me, simply getting by faculty and into an organization like Normal Motors was the dream,” Kay remembers. “I grew to become part of that group and that is after I began realizing I could possibly be in management positions, that I may do greater issues.”
GM employed Ralph Szygenda, its first CIO, within the Nineteen Nineties.
“That is after I thought, ‘Wow, I’d like to be in a job like that,’ as a result of it is a mixture of getting to know enterprise in addition to expertise. And it was what I actually preferred doing,” says Kay.
Management in Totally different Industries
Kay labored with Maryann Goebel, who was the CIO at GM North America between 2003 and 2006. And Goebel grew to become a lifetime mentor and the primary particular person to suggest Kay for roles outdoors of GM.
Kay’s first function outdoors of GM and the automotive business was as senior vp and CTO at Comerica Financial institution. The subsequent steppingstone in her profession was as enterprise CTO at SunTrust Financial institution. From there, she moved to Pacific Gasoline and Electrical Firm, the place she labored her means as much as senior vp and CIO.
In every successive function, Kay’s duties grew and broadened. As her profession unfolded, she discovered find out how to be a very good technologist and enterprise chief.
“I believe [for] many people, and I did it early in my profession, we get enamored with a expertise after which try to hunt for a spot to place it,” says Kay. “What would typically occur is you’d have this mismatch of expertise that would not actually remedy the enterprise drawback at hand.”
In every of her totally different roles, Kay discovered that she wanted the power to empower folks and take away blockers with expertise, however she wanted a eager understanding of the enterprise and its particular business to perform that. “Being a very good technologist is actually understanding the enterprise drawback at hand,” she explains.
The CIO Function at Principal Monetary Group
Principal Monetary Group approached Kay throughout its hunt for a brand new CIO.
“This firm on the time … had acknowledged that what bought them right here to 140 years wasn’t going to be what will get them to a different 140 years. So, having this humility to acknowledge that and willingness to handle it and pivot was actually interesting to me,” Kay shares.
She accepted the job and began in Could 2020, just some months into the worldwide COVID pandemic. Kay aspires to be an accessible chief, a administration model challenged by a 100% distant workforce. Stopping by somebody’s desk or leaving her door open wasn’t an choice. Even casual conferences would should be scheduled through a digital assembly platform.
She began internet hosting a weekly, open digital assembly, Espresso with Kathy, as an experiment. Anyone in her group may be part of for an unstructured dialog about work or the rest taking place within the wider world. That assembly drew a whole lot of contributors, and it has outlived the pandemic. At the moment, it’s a month-to-month assembly that is still digital so workforce members working remotely and in different places of work can nonetheless be part of.
“It is actually damaged down limitations. I’ve so many individuals on my workforce who say, ‘I’d have by no means thought I’d be speaking immediately with the CIO of an organization. I by no means thought I’d really feel snug sending a message or getting time on the calendar,’” says Kay.
At the moment, this assembly is one amongst many in Kay’s busy schedule.
“Within the CIO function, I’m entrance and middle dealing with off with my enterprise colleagues actually understanding technique, serving to outline it, difficult methods of doing issues,” she says.
On any given day, she could possibly be having monetary discussions, checking on the progress of various initiatives, and spending time mentoring folks on her workforce.
Kay notes her delight in how well-aligned expertise and technique have change into at Principal Monetary Group. When she first began, every of the corporate’s traces of enterprise had a technique and associated expertise plans. However there have been numerous shared applied sciences that weren’t essentially coordinated throughout these totally different traces of enterprise.
Kay and her workforce took a step again to search for methods to combine expertise into methods throughout your entire enterprise. “In consequence, there are capabilities that we’re delivering way more rapidly and iteratively than we may up to now due to how we have designed this. So, we have constructed issues which have actually improved the client expertise,” Kay explains.
Over the course of her profession, Kay has discovered that expertise management can transcend business traces.
“Being a technologist offers you a chance to essentially go throughout totally different industries,” says Kay. “I’ve had that luxurious. You may typically discover that what you discovered in a single business might be leveraged in one other business. And you then be taught even new issues. You carry new concepts, and I believe having this background and the power to maneuver to totally different industries has been tremendous gratifying.”
