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 laptop science as an alternative. She began her profession at Common Motors, the place a mentor acknowledged her potential. Right this 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 might by no means have occurred to me I’d be able like this,” she shares.
She wasn’t even certain if she was going to go to school, however a company 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, steady, well-paying careers. Laptop science was paying nicely. So I believed, ‘I’ll 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 numerous 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 techniques.
Kay then labored with Chevrolet division of the corporate, the place she caught the attention of an inner management program that chosen high-potential staff.
“For me, simply getting by way of school and into an organization like Common Motors was the dream,” Kay remembers. “I grew to become part of that group and that is after I began realizing I might be in management positions, that I may do larger issues.”
GM employed Ralph Szygenda, its first CIO, within the Nineties.
“That is after I thought, ‘Wow, I’d like to be in a task like that,’ as a result of it is a mixture of getting to know enterprise in addition to know-how. And it was what I actually appreciated doing,” says Kay.
Management in Completely 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 individual to advocate 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 manner as much as senior vp and CIO.
In every successive function, Kay’s duties grew and broadened. As her profession unfolded, she realized the way to be a great technologist and enterprise chief.
“I feel [for] many people, and I did it early in my profession, we get enamored with a know-how after which try to hunt for a spot to place it,” says Kay. “What would typically occur is you’d have this mismatch of know-how that would not actually resolve the enterprise drawback at hand.”
In every of her completely different roles, Kay discovered that she wanted the power to empower individuals and take away blockers with know-how, however she wanted a eager understanding of the enterprise and its particular business to perform that. “Being a great technologist is absolutely 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 deal with it and pivot was actually interesting to me,” Kay shares.
She accepted the job and began in Could 2020, only a few months into the worldwide COVID pandemic. Kay aspires to be an accessible chief, a administration type challenged by a 100% distant workforce. Stopping by somebody’s desk or leaving her door open wasn’t an possibility. Even casual conferences would have to 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 occurring within the wider world. That assembly drew a whole bunch of members, and it has outlived the pandemic. Right this moment, it’s a month-to-month assembly that continues to be digital so workforce members working remotely and in different places of work can nonetheless be part of.
“It is actually damaged down obstacles. 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.
Right this moment, this assembly is one amongst many in Kay’s busy schedule.
“Within the CIO function, I’m entrance and middle going through off with my enterprise colleagues actually understanding technique, serving to outline it, difficult methods of doing issues,” she says.
On any given day, she might be having monetary discussions, checking on the progress of various initiatives, and spending time mentoring individuals on her workforce.
Kay notes her satisfaction in how well-aligned know-how and technique have develop into at Principal Monetary Group. When she first began, every of the corporate’s traces of enterprise had a technique and associated know-how plans. However there have been quite a lot of shared applied sciences that weren’t essentially coordinated throughout these completely different traces of enterprise.
Kay and her workforce took a step again to search for methods to combine know-how into methods throughout your entire enterprise. “Because of this, there are capabilities that we’re delivering far more rapidly and iteratively than we may previously due to how we have designed this. So, we have constructed issues which have actually improved the shopper expertise,” Kay explains.
Over the course of her profession, Kay has discovered that know-how management can transcend business traces.
“Being a technologist provides you a chance to essentially go throughout completely different industries,” says Kay. “I’ve had that luxurious. You may typically discover that what you realized in a single business might be leveraged in one other business. And you then study even new issues. You convey new concepts, and I feel having this background and the power to maneuver to completely different industries has been tremendous gratifying.”
