Good morning,
“I’m a constant learner. It’s critically important to be continuously learning, even if you’re in a very senior position.” That’s what Tracey T. Travis, EVP and CFO at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc., told me.
I sat down with Travis recently after she was honored with a legacy award during Black Enterprise’s annual event in celebration of Women’s History Month. The award honors those who've defied the odds and changed the world for future generations. “It’s an acknowledgment of a career that has been well beyond my expectations,” she says. I usually talk numbers with Travis, but this time, I asked her about her career journey.
“My first job was as an engineer at General Motors,” Travis says. “I thought I would have a career in operations management.” But that all changed when she earned her MBA. “I took my first finance class and fell in love with finance,” she says. Travis then pivoted to financial roles at General Motors, including on the controller’s staff, where she worked on international product programs, joint ventures, and divestitures.
Travis, who joined cosmetics giant Estée Lauder in 2012, has navigated a more than 20-year career in financial leadership. She was an SVP and CFO at Ralph Lauren and an SVP and CFO of Intimate Brands for Limited Brands Inc., to name a few roles. And Travis spent a decade at PepsiCo Inc. and the Pepsi Bottling Group in financial leadership and operations management positions.
At PepsiCo, a pivotal moment in her career trajectory included both sponsorship and profit and loss management. Travis was the CFO of a business unit at the company, and the chief operating officer at the time was a woman, she says. In a discussion about talent, the COO heard from people who spoke highly of Travis’ work in finance roles, she explains. Travis was eventually offered a general manager position.
“There weren't very many women general managers at that time, and certainly none that had done a cross-functional role from finance and general management,” she explains. The role “really expanded me in terms of the remit of how I thought about the business,” she says. “And how I thought about being a business partner when you're managing P&L.”
Advice for CFOs
As Travis has seen the role of CFO evolve over the years, I asked her to share essential skill sets for a modern finance chief. Here’s her advice:
1 — Be strategic. “When you think about the last couple of years, the pandemic, and the impact it’s had on business, CFOs have played a significant role in making sure that businesses, particularly consumer businesses, were able to survive during this time, as well as prepare for an acceleration in growth,” she says.
2 — Be inclusive. “Talent is increasingly difficult to get,” Travis explains. "And you can’t just seek the skills you're looking for in a narrow segment of the population. By being broad, you’re going to get the best talent. At every CFO forum that I go to, attracting, retaining, and training talent is at the top of the agenda.”
She continues, “More than 80% of Estée Lauder's employees are women, and more than 60% of leaders at the company are women as well. We have many public initiatives as it relates to increasing minority female representation at all levels, recognizing it's more challenging, quite frankly, for Black and Hispanic women, and particularly Black women, to progress.” For example, the From Every Chair Program, where the senior executive team provides mentorship.
“It was a game changer for the organization,” Travis says. “It’s been a game changer for me in the past as well when I participated in mentor programs.” About 20% or more of participants in the program have been promoted within the company, she says.
3 — Obtain digital skills. “Every company is increasingly digital,” Travis says. “Fortunately, I have responsibility for IT, and a couple of the outside boards that I sit on as well are technology enabled. I try to immerse myself in all the new technologies. When you’re working with the CEO on the strategy for the company, allocating resources toward what’s important for future growth, and helping the company not become obsolete, having digital skills is critically important.”
Speaking of technology, Travis says her finance organization at Estée Lauder launched an initiative called “Digital Finance,” where they’re exploring how to further digitize end-to-end processes, and “definitely one of the areas is forecasting.”
Travis is indeed a constant learner and pays it forward as she continues her journey.
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
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